Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: Winter 1978 Volume 16 Number 4, Pages 83–87


When Berwyn Had an Undefeated and United Football Team

Bob Goshorn

Page 83

Even before the 1933 season started, there was a feeling that it was going to be a year with great potential at Berwyn, with prospects for a record better than the previous year's four wins, three losses, and one tie. It was Ken Mateer's second year as athletic director and coach at the Tredyffrin-Easttown High School, and his team had a large number of returning veterans as well as several promising replacements for those who had graduated.

In fact, eight of the starting eleven, including all four in the backfield -- halfbacks Captain "Reds" Byassee and Spencer Gettys, fullback Bill Bunting, and quarterback Joe Townsend — and four of the seven linemen — ends Pete Chicarelli and "Bud" Dempsey, tackle Elmer Hatton, and center Fred Miller — had seen consid­erable action the previous season. Both Byassee and Dempsey had been selected for the All-Chester County first team in 1932, while Townsend had been named to the second team and Bunting and Hatton had received honorable mention. The only newcomers to the lineup were Jim Miller and Harvey Williams, at the guard positions, and Frank "Mother" Oat at the other tackle. Backup reserves for the starters included Bob Kendig, Frank Fioretti, John Forcini, Joe Sacks, and Henry Robertson.

Page 84

The season opened on September 30 at Glen-Nor High School in southern Delaware County. Led by Captain Reds Byassee, the Garnet and Gray took advantage of several Glen-Nor fumbles to win by a 20-0 score, Byassee scoring one touchdown and Spence Gettys the other two, with Bill Bunting adding the two extra points.

To build team spirit and unity, Coach Mateer got permission for the team to eat lunch together in one of the classrooms. While the players ate the lunches they had brought to school with them, he would use the room's chalkboard for blackboard drill and to diagram plays, and also go over the rules with the players. The coach also made it a point to visit with each of the players in his home and have lunch or dinner with the family "so they would know what sort of a man I was, hand­ling their boys". The players, incidentally, came from all over the district — from Howellville, from Devault, from the Mt. Pleasant area — and after practice most of them had to walk home. But despite the racial problems in some of the elementary schools, there was apparently no sign of any such problems on the team.

The second game the following week, on October 7, was at home against Pottstown, the team showing "a diversified system of attack" in again winning by a 20-0 score. The three touchdowns were scored by Fred Miller, by Joe Townsend on a 35-yard end run, and by Spence Gettys on a 65-yard dash after intercepting a Pottstown pass.

The touchdown scored by Miller was somewhat extraordinary in that centers do not usually score touchdowns. But T-E had a special play, in which the center, after snapping the ball to the quarterback, would take a step back and have the ball handed back to him. Against Pottstown, it was reported, he "walked through a big hole" to score standing up from four yards out. At a Pennsylvania high school coaches' clinic at East Strouds­burg at the end of the season, Coach Mateer was asked to diagram the play with which his centers had scored several touchdowns over the past two years, and it was subsequently outlawed by a new rule requiring that a player receiving a hand-off from the quarterback be at least one yard behind the line of scrimmage

But in the meantime, in the next game the Radnor coach "had his center on his hands and knees watching our center", Mateer later recalled. At the same time, to counteract Radnor's powerful passing attack, the Berwyn team prepared an unorthodox defense, playing two backfield men about 25 yards from the line of scrimmage and with both ends also pulled back slightly to cover potential receivers.

Page 85

The Radnor game, played the following week on October 13 (it was also a Friday!) at Berwyn, was probably the key game of the season. Both teams came into the game undefeated, but Berwyn had not beaten the Wayne team in the past nine years. After a scoreless first half, in the third quarter Radnor took a 2-0 lead on a safety on a blocked kick following a broken play in the Berwyn backfield. After receiving the ensuing kickoff, however, two passes from Byassee to Gettys, one good for 16 yards and the other for 35 yards, brought the ball to the Rad­nor l6-yard line. after a line plunge gained nothing, Townsend dropped back and down on one knee in position for a field goal attempt. No one really believed Bunting would actually kick the ball on only second down — but he did, the ball clearing the crossbar of the goal posts by almost ten feet. It made the score 3-2, which was also the final score. As the Suburban described it, Radnor played well "but in Berwyn they found ... a team that played a little bit better".

An unusual aspect to the Berwyn offense was that the team did not use a huddle, quarterback Townsend calling the plays with signals at the line of scrimmage. "He would spit these numbers out fast," Mateer again later recalled, adding, "It was hard, but I wanted to keen the team sharp." One exception, however, was the last five minutes of the Radnor game, when the huddle was employed, though only to use up valuable time to protect the narrow one-point lead.

The game the following week, on October 21, was at Conshohocken. Although the home team scored first, it was no match for T-E, with the final score 49-14. Bunting, Gettys, and Forcini each scored two touchdowns, with Townsend adding the other; Bunting also kicked five extra points, the Garnet and Gray scoring its other two points on a safety.

The team was really gaining confidence: in fact, one of the biggest concerns of the fans now was a possibility of over-con­fidence. In the next game, against Coatesville, for example, during the pre-game toss of the coin ceremonies before the kick­off, Captain Byassee told the Coatesville captain what Berwyn's first four plays would be when it got the ball.

Despite this advance information, Berwyn scored on its third play, added a second touchdown on the sixth play after it got the ball again, and went on to a 41-0 win. Gettys had four of the six touchdowns, one on a 95-yard pass play, while Byassee and Townsend had one each, Bunting adding five extra, points. The team was "just as impressive as the score indicates", the Sub­urban noted.

Page 86

An open date followed the Coatesville game on the schedule, and on Armistice Day the team met Downingtown, the defending County champions. The day before the game, Lower Marion, the leading contender for Suburban Conference honors, defeated Lansdowne, 56-0.

Not to be outdone, Berwyn ran over Downingtown, 62-0, Gettys again scoring four touchdowns, while Bunting had three six-pointers along with eight extra points, and Byassee added the other two touchdowns. While the coach was mildly censured by the principal, S. Paul Teamer, a former coach himself, for the lopsided score, the principal also recognized it was the out­growth of honest enthusiasm. The fact was that Downingtown was so badly outplayed it never advanced the ball even to midfield.

The next opponent was an unbeaten Phoenixville eleven, with a record of four victories and three scoreless ties but which had allowed its opposition just one touchdown in the seven games. Again T-E had a special play, which it had practiced over and over, for the game. Setting the ball up near the sideline for the kickoff, instead of kicking downfield the kicker would run out of bounds and circle back in (the rules required only that all eleven men be on the playing field when the ball was kicked), kicking the ball across the field as well as the necessary ten yards downfield, to his three fastest teammates, who could run to that section of the field in just the length of time it took the ball to get there.

The announcement to the referee that Berwyn would score from its kickoff was met with light sarcasm from the officials, but it worked and on the third play of the game Byassee scored the game's only touchdown on a short pass, the final score being 6-0. The game was marred by many penalties as a result of the "rough tactics" of both sides, with a number of players, including By­assee, Chicarelli and Dempsey, injured during the contest.

In the meantime, Lower Marion was also compiling an undefeated and untied record. In eight games it had scored 276 points to its opponents' 8. Even before the final games of the season, fans at both ends of the Main Line began talking of a possible post­season game, to be played at Villanove Stadium between the two teams to determine the real Suburban champion. The possibility was short-lived, however, as before the last game, the Tredyffrin School Board, after meeting with the Easttown Board, rejected the playing of any game after the regular season. The Board pointed out that due to early winter weather, the weather probably would not be suitable for a championship game; and that since there is always a letdown in training at the end of the season, there was too much risk of injury to players if a game were played so late in the year. Although Coach Mateer was quoted as being "eager for the game" at the time, by hindsight he admitted the Board had made a wise decision and the right one.

Page 87

The last game of the season was against Berwyn's traditional rival, West Chester, on Thanksgiving Day. With both Gettys and. Townsend scoring on long runs, Gettys on a 92-yard sprint with an intercepted pass, T-E scored a 20-6 win, the first win over the Warriors in three years, With the victory, Berwyn also regained the County championship it had first won in 1929 and again in 1930.

It was Berwyn's first undefeated and untied season, surpassing even the 1930 season in which T-E was also undefeated, but held to two ties. In eight games, the team had scored 221 points to its opponents' 22, with only Conshohocken and West Chester able to cross its goal line. But although it won the County championship, Suburban honors, under a complicated point system, went to Lower Marion, also undefeated and untied and victors over Radnor (the only common opponent) by a 27-0 score.

While none of the players could afford to go on to college in those depression years, several of them were probably of college varsity caliber. Most of them, though, were able to find jobs in the area, and several of them held quite responsible positions in later years.

Perhaps the spirit of the team was summed up by Harry Stuhldreher, head coach at Villanova and one of Notre Dame's famed "Four Horsemen" backfield, who was the principal speaker at the banquet honoring the team, "No one gets anything worthwhile," he com­mented, "unless he works hard for it. On the athletic field the boys are taught to give everything they have. They are made to realize the importance of self-sacrifice for team work. In other words, they are learning all the underlying principles of any business on the football field."

The following April, Coach Mateer submitted his resignation, after being notified that his contract would not be renewed, but was hired by the Tredyffrin School Board as principal of the Paoli Grammar School and thus began a career in school administration. So it was in his last year of coaching that Tredyffrin-Easttown High School had its first unbeaten and untied football team.

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Sources:

Files of the Wayne Suburban, West Chester Daily Local News.

Personal interview with Kenneth Mateer.

 
 

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