Busy Courting...
"When I Was 21"

E-State Star Was Captain of 3 Teams, Busy Courting
by Saralena Sherman

     When Homer Woodson (Bill) Hargiss was 21, he was a senior in Kansas State Teachers College at Emporia. It was his second year as captain of the football team, his second year as captain of the track team, and his second year as captain of the basketball team.
     He was on the baseball team, the gymnastics team, the boxing and wrestling teams. He sang in  the glee club. He was working his way through school waiting on tables at a boarding club for his meals and earning money by delivering a laundry route.
     It was that same year Bill Hargiss — "No one ever called me Homer Woodson. It just didn't fit." — met coed Vera Strickler of Solomon.
     "She had transferred to Emporia from Liberty College in Missouri that year," Hargiss related.
     Hargiss had a date with another girl to go horseback riding. But he had to drop the girl by Miss Strickler's place first to borrow a riding habit. That's how he met the future Mrs. Hargiss.
     He remembers he didn't get to court Miss Strickler in college very much. The big date he planned for the annual spring party, fell through because he came down with the mumps. Hargiss was so busy with activities and side jobs his senior year at Emporia, he wonders today how he ever got through school. But he did graduate and that fall took over the coaching and teaching position he had been assigned at Marion High School.
     At Marion, Hargiss coached all sports including the girls' basketball team and also taught history and math. His teams—"composed of good, big farmer boys" — came through with great winning streaks that first year.
     The following year Hargiss was coaching everything at the college of Emporia. His three years at C. of E. "were pretty good," he puts it mildly. Then Hargiss went to the University of Kansas as an assistant coach in basketball, track and handling gymnastics—with the understanding he would take over football the next year.
     But there was confusion among athletic policy makers at KU. Hargiss learned he wouldn't be coaching football and in the summer of 1914 it was announced he would be head coach at his alma mater, KSTC. More than 100 eager young athletes reported for football practice that fall. Again, Hargiss was fielding potent lineups, which continued through his four years at KSTC.
     Long before now, Hargiss had found his way to Halstead, where Miss Strickler was teaching music in the high school, and convinced her she should give up teaching to become Mrs. Hargiss.
     There was a one-year interval of coaching at Oregon State for Hargiss. That same year he made a hush-hush informal deal with Stanford. But the news leaked out and the Stanford coaching job fell through. Hargiss again was head coach and athletic director at KSTC from 1920 to 1927.
     Hargiss is credited with pioneering the use of the huddle at Oregon. Sports writers panned him for the innovation and other coaches criticized the huddle because they said it cost time. But Hargiss brought the huddle back to Kansas and Bob Zuppke of Illinois began employing it. Today most teams use it.
    Hargiss went to KU in 1928 as football and track coach. He gave up the head coaching job after the 1932 season but continued to serve KU as a scout, freshman. coach and as head track coach until 1943 and World War II duty, when he served overseas as recreation director for the armed forces.
     After the war, he was in real estate business in Topeka for a period. From 1952 to 1962 he was executive secretary to the State Athletic Commission.
     It was in 1960 he was given leave of absence to coach the Air Force Olympics team.
     Bill Hargiss today is busily retired. He had discovered he had some ability in painting with water colors when he was in college. Today he paints, largely landscapes, and usually works in oils. He raises roses, plays golf and has a whole basement of carpenter's tools.
     Mrs. Hargiss died in 1955 and he makes his home with a daughter, Genevieve, at 1271 Randolph. She is a teacher at KU and holds a doctor's degree in music education. His son Clarke, who has a master's degree in mechanical engineering, is head of quality and control at the North American Aviation plant at Canoga Park, Calif. Another daughter, Shirley Oberheide of Independence, Mo., a former Miss Kansas, currently is working toward her master's degree in music education at KU "now that her children are growing up."
     This week, Bill Hargiss is enjoying himself working as band superintendent at the Mid America Fair. It's his job to handle the 28 visiting school bands or a total of 296 young band players. "But I get along with youngsters," Hargiss says of this job.
     Hargiss' picture hangs as a charter member in the Kansas Athletic Hall of Fame. Among the pictures hanging along with his in the Hall today are four Kansas boys he coached: John Kuck of Emporia State who held the world's shot put record; Jim Bausch of KU, all-American football player and world's record holder in decathlon; Glenn Cunningham of KU, who in his day held the world record in the mile, and Arthur Schabinger of C of E, whom Hargiss considers one of the greatest quarterbacks ever produced in Kansas and an all-around athlete.
     Of Bill Hargiss, the farm boy who came from Crawford and Cherokee counties, it has been said he could have been a heavyweight fighter of national renown if his parents had not interfered. "He could easily have been the greatest track athlete in America . . . an all-America selection if he had played in the East where they picked them in those days." As a coach he had "imagination, initiative and skill." As a man he is "generous, warm hearted, lovable Bill Hargiss."