The Changing Face of Richland High School Sports
As graduation claims the star players, a new generation of lightweights faces the brutal reality of local football.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A big crowd of young people went to Pasco in the auto truck last Thursday to attend the football game played by Pasco and Richland. Although the local boys went down to overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Pasco high, they had all the odds against them as the Richland team is practically all light men and most of them are in the game for the first time this season. Most of the boys who composed Richland’s prize-winning aggregation last year have either graduated or left school and are being heard from in institutions of higher learning. Both Bill and Julius Hopp will undoubtedly make the team at Whitman College, while Ted Medica is prevented from doing so by the fact that he injured his leg in the early practice games of the season.
“The local boys went down to overwhelming defeat... as the Richland team is practically all light men.”
Richland today is a powerhouse of the Tri-Cities, but in 1916, it was a small farming community struggling to field a competitive team. The story reflects the universal small-town anxiety about losing 'the best and brightest' to universities, a cycle that continues in modern rural Washington.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.