Windthorst's foray into eight-man football

How a monastery and a meeting with Allen changed Trojan football in the late '50s

An Associated Press story in the Miami Herald highlighted Windthorst’s problem with having enough football players in 1959.

Windthorst once played Allen in a high school football game.

Windthorst statistician Mike Rueschenberg brought this to my attention last weekend with a comment on my recent “They played who in the playoffs?” post.

The fact that the Trojans – who compete in the smallest 11-man classification – squared off against the biggest school in the state shouldn’t be that surprising only because this meeting occurred in 1959 when Allen was still a rural town.

But the story behind the 1959 Trojans is interesting enough to deserve its own historical deep dive. About 65 years ago, Windthorst was hoping to bounce back from a winless 1958 season.

But a young team coupled with an Arkansas monastery kept that success from occurring, triggering a decade of eight-man football in the German town.

Let’s trace Windthorst’s football history back to its roots. Prior to superintendent Peter Irwin’s arrival in 1954, there were only intermurals in the fall and baseball in the spring.

But Irwin, a 28-year-old from Louisiana, gained excitement for the new sport, and the next thing you knew, a stadium was being built behind St. Mary’s Catholic Church.