THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME

Kinley McMillan - Class of 1886

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Kinley McMillan '86 had made a name for himself while an undergraduate at Wooster.  He became president of his class and became a "sub pitcher" on the "first nine" or the "University Club" which apparently was at least a facsimile of a varsity baseball team.  His interest in sports was quite apparent in spite of the lethargy of his peers.  In his senior year, McMillan played right field on the varsity baseball team but records of his performance are not available.

McMillan returned to Wooster in 1889, after completing work at Princeton Seminary, where in addition to excelling academically, he learned a great deal about football as it was being played on the college level in the east.  Sensing the fact that there were some men on the Wooster campus who had athletic ability, he gathered them around him, and pieced together the first football team in Wooster history.  McMillan was Wooster's first football coach.

The squad with which McMillan was working consisted, for the most part, of men who were also playing fall baseball in the inter-fraternity league.  An aroused Athletic Association empowered a committee to purchase suits and caps for the football team.  Millan's reflections on a starting line-up were limited by the 15 people making themselves available for his practice sessions.

In addition to the needed practice, he was confronted with the problem of whom to play against and where.  He discovered that Denison University in Granville, Ohio, was in the process of fielding a team.  Wooster agreed to meet Denison twice.  Due to the lack of facilities at Wooster, the first game was played at the Wooster fair grounds and the second games would be played in Granville.  The first game, of the historic two game series, was finally scheduled for Saturday, November 23, 1889.  This was 20 years after Rutgers and Princeton played the very first intercollegiate football in America.

"The Wooster team took the train at Wooster on Friday Nov, 22nd and changed to the CA &C line at Orville. They detrained at Centerburg, Ohio, and traveled by the New York Central Railway to Granville.  This took all day and they stayed overnight in Granville.  Incidentally, each player paid his own way." - Bob Jamison '27 (was this referencing the Dec 6th game?)

Two exhausted teams must have been grateful for the final gun with the score Wooster 48 and Denison 0. 

Two weeks later, on December 6, 1889, the teams met again. The final score was Wooster 50 and Denison 0

The University of Wooster rules did not allow the team to travel home on the Sabbath Day, so the group of victorious stalwarts returned to Wooster on  Monday to a Wooster platform crowded with "leather lunged" students, faculty, and townspeople.  After platform speeches, everyone went to Mrs. Speer's house (mother of referee John Speer) for turkey and plumb pudding in the dinning room. 

It might be noted that, the first football game played in the state of Ohio was Cincinnati University versus Miami University of Ohio in 1888 which ended in a scoreless tie.  When Wooster's John Jameson crossed the Denison goal line in the 1889 game, he produced the first points ever scored in an intercollegiate game in the state of Ohio.

Back at Wooster, McMillan preached the sermon in Kauke Chapel the following Sunday.  It was his first in the chapel and he spoke on "Fight the Good Fight" to a capacity house.

It was typical of this man who devoted the rest of his life to preaching the Gospel.

Information from Ed Arn's: Black & Gold - A History of Athletics; The College of Wooster 1870-1945 (1995)

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