Kansas State Normal Football Season, 1915
from "For the Sport of It", by Fred A. Markowitz 1963

 1915 Football Team:  In the front row, at the far left, are Meade Hargiss and Fran Welch.  In the second row, Bill Hargiss is at the far right.  Hartwig is noted as team captain on back of photo.

First Champions

Kansas State Normal tied with Baker for the Kansas Conference title in 1915. Bill Hargiss had his team fired up when the season opened. The Normal gridders smashed Bethany College 23 to 6, then turned back Kansas State, of the Missouri Valley Conference, 13 to 0 the following weekend. Southwestern bowed next, 7 to 14, and then the Normalites tied Washburn 7 to 7. In a game at Kansas City on November 6 of that year, the Normal settled for a tie with Warrensburg State Normal, 16 to 16.

More than 6,000 noisy football fans from Emporia and the surrounding countryside clogged the streets leading to C. of E. on Thanksgiving Day. The College was strong that year, and was out to regain the grid prestige it had lost to its rival the previous year. C. of E. partisans were whooping it up at the half. Their team had a 10 to 0 lead. But their hurrahs turned into moans during the second half. Bill Hargiss' halftime oratory snapped the Normalites out of their doldrums and they raced past the College 19 to 10. Fran Welch sparked the second-half comeback with his sparkling play at quarterback.

Haskell and K.U. turned back the Normal that year, 21 to 7 and 21 to 3, respectively.

The lineup of 1915 was about the same as it was in 1914. Among the newcomers was Meade Hargiss, younger brother of the Normal coach. He helped Welch and Culter with the quarterbacking.

Another new face that year was Homer Kunz. He played the left guard position, and how he got there is an interesting story : "I had given up hope of ever going to high school, let alone to college. However, I had a brother, O. W. Kunz, enrolled in the Normal and rooming at the same house as W. S. Hay, the little end in whose memory the drinking fountain north of the gym was erected. I visited O. W. one evening in 1910, and met Hay, who sold me on the idea of playing football and participating in all athletics. That fall, with only an eighth-grade certificate, I enrolled in the first year of the newly-established Normal Secondary School, with L. A. Parke as my adviser. I finally got enough credits to play football in 1915. The meeting with Bill Hay started me in school, and it was responsible for my career in the field of education. I retired from the Kansas City, Mo., school system in 1957."

1915 

KSN                  Opp
23 Bethany             6
 3 Kansas U.          21
13 Kansas State        0
14 Southwestern        0
7 Washburn             7
16 Warrensburg        16
 7 Haskell            21
28 Pittsburg           0
19 College of Emporia 10

130   5-2-2           81 Conference Co-champs with Baker
Coach—H. W. Hargiss