Expedition Hawaii
When one of the greatest teams in SDSU history ventured to the Hawaiian Islands
A few weeks back, I came across an old newspaper clipping on South Dakota State University's football team. The final sentence was, in a word, surprising:
"The only game lost by Brookings in 1926 was with the University of Hawaii at Honolulu."
Honestly, I didn't believe it at first. The idea of a team from Brookings, South Dakota traveling to Hawaii in 1926 to play a single football game didn't really seem feasible. Air travel, while possible, wasn't used for passenger transport until later the next decade. Railways had been built and were widely available, but I couldn't imagine how long it would take just to get to the West Coast. This was also 1926, not 2023. College football and, college athletics as a whole, were strictly regional and the idea of (frankly) obscene travel wouldn't become a thing until television contracts controlled the sport a little less than a century later (R.I.P. to the Pac-12 Conference).
I can report on two things from my deep dive into that clipping: SDSU did play Hawaii, except that newspaper clipping above is wrong, and the 1926 "gridders" were probably the second-greatest team in school history, trailing only the national champions from last year. Let me share.
"The Great '26 Grid Season"
Here's how the 1928 Jackrabbit describes the 1926 football season: "The greatest grid season in the history of State College athletics." Remember what I said about college athletics being strictly regional a few sentences ago? Never mind that. This Jackrabbit team, led by Coach Charles A. West*, had an "anywhere, anytime, anyplace" mentality. After playing “Columbus” to a 7-7 tie in the first game of the season, the "scrappy Jackrabbit eleven" bullied Huron, Buena Vista and both of the North Dakota schools en route to a 4-0-1 record. They then played the team from Vermillion to a 0-0 tie in a blinding snowstorm on Hobo Day. They wouldn't tie or loss another game for the rest of the 1926 season.*
After claiming the North Central Conference crown, Coach West took his team 900 miles east to Detroit to take on the "strong Detroit University eleven." SDSU won 3-0. Five days later, the Jacks traveled 530 miles south to St. Louis to play St. Louis University. The result? Another rout…14-0, Jacks.
Coach West and his team made the journey back to Brookings, with the expectation that the season was all but over. While away, SDSU had received a telegram from the University of Hawaii, inviting them to the islands for a football game. SDSU officials accepted and approved of the trip after learning the Hawaiians would foot the bill for the travel.
By land and by sea
Coach West’s eleven were scheduled to play Hawaii over the Christmas holiday. With 3,784 miles of travel separating Brookings from Honolulu, the team left from campus on Dec. 11. They would first travel by rail to San Francisco, where they then would board a boat bound for Hawaii.
In the 1920s, travel from California to Hawaii was somewhat common for the upper class of the West Coast, with the only mode of transportation being by sea. Commercial travel by steamship began in the 1860s and became more and more frequent as time went on. Prior to the Great Depression, more than 20,000 tourists each year made Hawaii their holiday location. At the time, air travel to the islands was in its infancy. In 1927, just months after the boys from Brookings would make their trip to the islands, a “pineapple baron” named James Dole offered a $25,000 incentive to anyone who could fly non-stop from California to Honolulu. Eight planes took part in the “Dole Air Race.” Only two planes survived the flight. Ten people would die in the attempt.* Commercial air travel to Hawaii wouldn’t begin in earnest until the mid-1930s.
*This is a morbid, but interesting, anecdote reflective of the adventurous and dangerous time period.
The Jacks arrived in San Francisco on Dec. 16 and boarded the U.S.S. Wilhelmina, a former U.S. Navy steamship that was used as a transport boat during World War I, bound for Honolulu. The team arrived in Honolulu Harbor on Dec. 21 after a short 10-day jaunt across the Pacific and was warmly received by representatives from the Honolulu civic groups.
The team then traveled to Wahiawa, home to many U.S. Army barracks, where the they would stay and practice leading up to their game vs. the state’s flagship university.
“The altitude and temperature at Wahiawa have been found to be more agreeable to visitors from the continent than the climate here. The gridders from the University of Utah trained for their game with Hawaii at Wahiawa and decisively beat the islanders.” - The Dec. 24, 1926 edition of The Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times
‘Game Not Spectacular’
The game vs. the University of Hawaii was scheduled for Christmas Day. Earlier in the week, the “Deans” (the University of Hawaii’s nickname) had played and lost 17-7 to the University of Utah.* Utah had won the Rocky Mountain Conference and the game vs. Hawaii was considered a “reward” for their first perfect season in school history.
*A few interesting notes from Utah’s travels to Hawaii that may provide more insight into what SDSU experienced: several thousand people greeted the Utes as they docked in Honolulu, and the team was decorated in leis as they were paraded through the city. This anecdote, from the Dec. 19, 1926 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune, is also amusing — “On Friday, the football team found a little Chinese store selling firecrackers, and bought the whole stock. They spent their spare time setting off the firecrackers.”
SDSU’s game vs. Hawaii was characterized by strong winds and more than 12,000 in attendance. Knute Rockne, the Notre Dame player and coach who transformed college football with the forward pass, was the game’s official. Hawaii scored first, only after SDSU refused to punt due to the strong winds in their face. Instead, they gave halfback Frank Kelly the ball on an end run, only to be tackled in his own endzone for a safety. SDSU, more specifically Kelly, went on to kick two field goals (dropkicks) in the first half to take a 6-2 lead into half. The Associated Press described the feel of the game:
“The game generally lacked the spectacular features usually seen on Honolulu’s gridirons with high winds making playing difficult.”
The second half was much of the same, with Kelly kicking another field goal to extend SDSU’s lead to 7. The game’s seemingly only drama came in the final two minutes, when Hawaii had the ball—and the wind—with 90 seconds to play. On a 10-play, 41 yard drive, the Deans marched all the way to SDSU’s one yard line, only to be stonewalled on one of the game’s final plays to secure a Jackrabbit victory.
Kelly, as the newspaper reports pointed out, was responsible for every single point. Below are pictures from the game via the 1928 Jackrabbit. Good luck figuring out which team is which.
‘Straight football triumphed over forward passes’
While not remembered in yearbooks or historical data, the game vs. the University of Hawaii would not be SDSU’s last on the island. On New Year’s Day 1927, SDSU took on the Honolulu Town Team (nicknamed the “Townies”—I’m not joking) in front of 15,000 energized Hawaiians at Honolulu Stadium. Earlier in the week, Coach West had noted that they would be practicing in secret, as the team had to put in “new wrinkles” for the other Hawaiian squad.
In somewhat of a role reversal, Hawaii got up to a 6-0 start and extended their lead to 7—13-6—heading into the final period of play. As noted in the postgame reports, SDSU had done little in the game besides run the ball and was having significant issues with the Townies line—filled with “older men” and veterans— as they far stronger than the Deans, and, as noted, was likely the strongest line and defensive that the Jackrabbits had faced all year. With less than three minutes to play, Coach West opened the playbook and ran what was more or less considered a trick play in 1926-27—a long forward pass. With calm winds, SDSU was able to connect on a few more ensuing passes and marched all the way to the Townies’ goal line. Kelly, playing in his final game as a Jackrabbit, connected on a fourth down pass that gave life to “the mainlanders.”
With the score now at 13-12, Kelly lined up for the extra point, only to have it blocked by the Townies. The game ended unceremoniously, 13-12, with SDSU losing in their final game of the season.
While it was a disappointing end to (at that point) the greatest season in SDSU Football history, the mainlanders did manage to win the admiration of the Hawaiians with their “never-say-die” mentality and grit. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin noted that “no visiting team in recent years has put up a pluckier fight or shown greater determination.”
Returning home
The Jackrabbits, along with Rockne, set sail for the mainland—according to the Honolulu Advertiser—on Jan. 5 aboard the S.S Matsonia, a luxury liner. It’s reported that the South Dakotans became quite friendly with the Hawaiians and would be missed as they departed back to frigid South Dakota.
“In both of their games, the Dakotans showed a clean, fighting spirit and they put their best into contests regardless of whether they were winning or losing. It is hoped that South Dakota State College will send a team here again, and it is understood that officials of that institution are already attempting to arrange for more games with University of Hawaii teams.” - The Jan. 4, 1928 edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin
The team returned to Brookings on Jan. 16 for an "all-college" banquet following the "most thrilling" grid season in the university's history. From the 1928 Jackrabbit:
“That team, every man in pink condition, loyal to State, and full of all the fight and pep in the world, leaves a great record for future grid teams to aspire to equal.”
Three members of the team—Ekern, Seeley and Krug—jumped straight into the basketball season as the trip had caused them to miss the first three games of the conference schedule. Coach West returned to coaching the freshman “cagers.”
Coach West was hopeful that SDSU would make return trips to the islands in the years following, and was also hopeful that Hawaii would travel to South Dakota for a Hobo Day tilt in either 1928 or 1929. Of course, those games would never come to fruition as the 1926 tilt remains the only game that SDSU has played vs. the University of Hawaii. Still, Coach West kept in contact with his friends from the islands as his letters to the team were regularly reported on by the Honolulu Advertiser. He would coach for one more season before stepping down. He finished his career at SDSU with a 44-17-9 record and three conference titles. Following the 1927 season, West left SDSU to become the athletic director and football coach at the University of North Dakota. Under his guidance, UND Football dominated the NCC, winning eight straight titles. He was inducted into UND’s Hall of Fame in 1975.
“He was an innovative coach, fine public speaker and widely admired by sports people. He embodied great character traits, including a fine sense of public relations, and it was said he could outdo—and did—many politicians. He was a perfectionist and reputedly was more widely known in the state than the late UND President John C. West (no relation) under whose regime he served so ably and long.”
Kelly—nicknamed the “Tyndall Flash”—went on to play professional football for the Cleveland Bulldogs and New York Giants. He was also a two-time unofficial world record holder in track and field. He was inducted into the Jackrabbit Hall of Fame in 1976 and the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
*I understand that in 1926 SDSU wasn’t actually SDSU (SDSC would be more appropriate) but for the purposes of clarity, I chose to use the current acronym.
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What an incredible story! Over a month of traveling to play just a football game. I love it.
This is a really great piece. The "Dole Air Race" is pure insanity!