What It Meant to Be a Coyote Book Ii

By Jerry Joe Jones

Rupel Perkins
1931
Hometown: Athens, Ohio
Deceased: (1908-1962)


In the Fall of 1928, Rupel Perkins came to Kansas Wesleyan University. This was the era of the Great Depression. Coming here, Rupel knew of only one man in Salina, Kansas, and at KWU. His name was Alexander B. Mackie, the Athletic Director and Football Coach at Kansas Wesleyan.

Born in Azam, Pennsylvania, Mackie graduated from Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport and later, from Ohio Wesleyan in 1919. Like Coach Gene Bissell, Alexander Mackie signed to play baseball with the Cleveland Indians; but elected to coach instead. As the head coach at Athens High School, his football teams were 17-1 in 1919 and 1920. His basketball team was even more impressive winning sixth place in the 1921 National Prep Tournament. With these winning credentials, Coach Mackie moved from Athens, Ohio, to guide the athletic program at KWU.

Only thirteen years old when Mackie left Athens for Salina, Rupel was living with his widowed mother, Maggie, and a sister Mildred, who was fourteen. His father, Arch, lived in Missouri where the children were born, but had died before the move to Athens.

When A.B. Mackie came to KWU, he inherited a football tradition that had produced only 25 wins in 16 seasons, just slightly over one victory per year. Those days were rough for Coach Mackie too. His very first game was against one of the powers of the Midwest in those days, Haskell Indian Institute, who poured it on the Coyotes, 89-0.

Coaching those first three years produced three losing seasons: 0-8, 2-7 and 4-5-1. Coach Mackie never had another losing season. His and KWUs first football championship came in 1927 as KWU won the KIAA (Kansas Intercollegiate Athletic Association). Eight freshmen started for that team of champions, and so did Martin Isaacson, the greatest halfback in KWU history and a first team All-KIAA and Kansas Collegiate First Team All-Stater, who was a senior and would not be returning.

The connection between Perkins and Mackie was somehow established by both men being in Athens, Ohio. Black athletes were not permitted to be athletic representatives at Athens High School and Rupel was not in high school when Coach Mackie left for Kansas. So how did the young black athlete come to Salina?

Rupel Perkins was the son of Archibald Arch Perkins and Maggie (Miller) Perkins who married in 1904 at New London, Rails, Missouri. Mildred, Rupels older sister by two years and the family were living on a farm when Arch passed away in 1910. Maggie took her small family to Davenport, Iowa, where she had relatives. From there the family somehow made it to Athens, Ohio, where A.B. Mackie was coaching in the white high school. Barely a teen-ager when Mackie left for Salina, observant friends of the football coach may have passed the word to Mackie about the speedster from Athens black community who would be able to play football and run track in Salina where KWU was currently having black athletes playing alongside white athletes in the Kansas college.

When Rupel Perkins came to Salina in the Fall of 1928, Kansas Wesleyan had concluded their greatest football season in the history of the sport from its inception in 1893 at KWU. The Coyotes would be the defending co-champions of the KIAA (Kansas Intercollegiate Athletic Association) with a 6-0-1 league record, an undefeated 7-0-1 season record and a goal line that had not been crossed for the entire season giving up zero points. Football members of the KIAA were Baker University, Baldwin, KS; Washburn University, Topeka, KS; Bethel College, North Newton, KS; Fort Hays State University, Fort Hays, KS; McPherson College, McPherson, KS; Bethany College, Lindsborg, KS; and St. Marys College, St. Marys, KS. The Coyotes graduated their greatest running back ever in the Formoso Flash, Martin Isaacson. Isaacson led the KIAA in touchdowns (16), scoring (108 points), total game offense (289

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479771806

Jerry Joe Jones

Jerry (Ol' Coach) Jones retired after seventeen years as Athletic Director/Basketball Coach at Kansas Wesleyan University. As co-founder of the KWU Athletic Hall of Fame, the old coach personally knew many of the alumni old-timers dating back to participation in the 1920's on through the present times. His research during the golden years of retirement have allowed him to pursue the writing career he abandoned back during his collegiate days at Baker University where he studied under the renowned Elsa Hively. Mrs. Hively lamented that Jones would spend the rest of his life wearing a whistle around his neck.

Book preview

What It Meant to be a Coyote

Book II

Jerry Joe Jones

Copyright © 2013 by Jerry Joe Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

73656

Contents

Decade of the 1920’s

Decade of the 1930’s

Decade of the 1940’s

Decade of the 1950’s

Decade of the 1960’s

Decade of the 1970’s

Decade of the 1980’s

Decade of the 1990’s

Decade of 2000’s

Dave%20Dallas.jpg

Dave Dallas

This book, What It Meant to be a Coyote!—Book II, is dedicated to Coach Dave Dallas, athletic director and head football coach at Kansas Wesleyan University.

Dave Dallas has been at Kansas Wesleyan since the start of the 1997 season when he was hired by former Athletic Director Jerry Jones, and has been in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference (KCAC) since 1989, also coaching at Ottawa University. He is the longest tenured coach in the KCAC. Since coming to Wesleyan, Dallas has racked up a 90-71 record with the Coyotes, good enough for second all-time in total coaching wins at KWU. However Dallas’ overall coaching record is 128-110-1 in 24 years, 16 at KWU and eight at KCAC rival, Ottawa University, where he was 38-39-1. This total of 166 wins is the most of any Head Football Coach at Kansas Wesleyan University. Franklin Eugene Bissell posted second place with 116 victories. Alexander B. Mackie went 78-15-13. Since coming to KWU, Dallas has captured two KCAC Championships in 2001 and 2002, and guided the Coyotes to their only two NAIA Post Season Championship berths in those same years. Dallas was named the 2001 KCAC Coach of the Year.

During his tenure at Wesleyan, Dallas has coached six NAIA All-Americans, and over 190 All-KCAC players, including six KCAC Players of the Year. Dallas has coached 27 NAIA All-American Scholar Athletes since 1997 at KWU.

Dallas played his collegiate football at Missouri Western, and began his coaching career there as a graduate assistant for two seasons in 1983 and 1984. After finishing his degree at MWSU in 1984, Dallas spent one season at Truman State University (then Northeast Missouri State) in 1985, as the Bulldogs captured the MIAA title that season with an 8-3 overall record, and 5-0 in the MIAA.

After taking a year off from the college ranks to coach at Rolla High School in Rolla, Mo., Dallas became defensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, for two seasons, before taking the head coaching job at Ottawa in 1989. Dallas took over the reigns of the Ottawa University program, and spent eight years at the leadership of the Braves, as they went 38-39-1 during his tenure.

In 1997, Dallas took over a struggling Kansas Wesleyan program that had gone 4-26 the previous three years before his arrival. In just four years, in 2001, Wesleyan captured its first KCAC title since 1982, and made the school’s first ever NAIA Post-Season appearance.

Dallas is active in the American Football Coaches Association, serving on the AFCA-NAIA board. Dallas currently serves as President of the AFCA-NAIA and is a rater for the NAIA Top-25 Football Poll.

Dallas and his wife Kelly live in Salina, and have four children Drew, Casey, Trey, and Molly. He also has two grandchildren Hayden and Cooper. Drew, Casey and Trey all attended KWU and played football. It appears Molly will be attending as soon as she graduates from Salina Central High School.

This is the second book in the series, What It Meant to be a Coyote! During Homecoming, 2009, the first book was published containing the stories of 64 men who’ve attended Kansas Wesleyan University as athletes or coaches. Both books follow this same pattern:

Foreword—Marshall P. Stanton, Past President, KWU

Decade of the 1920’s

1924 Anthony Zamrzla

Decade of the 1930’s

1933 Emice Dyck

1934 Gilbert Robinson

1934 Cade Suran

1939 Glenn Mitchell

Decade of the 1940’s

1944 Bill Keeler

1947 Ed Doherty

Decade of the 1950’s

1950 Charlie Fiffe

1953 Harold Frazell

1954 Dean Groves

1955 Gary Cassel

1956 Carroll Cyr

1957 Larry Houdek

1958 Bob Pinkall

1958 Wes Jackson

Decade of the 1960’s

1961 Charles Culley

1963 Gerald Childs

1964 Andy Deckert

1966 Ben Burgess

1968 Larry Williams

1968 Phil Coleman

1968 Marion Ogden

Decade of the 1970’s

1970 Alan Fahring

1970 Mike Malone

1970 Terry Call

1971 Bob Murray

1971 Dave McMullen

1972 Bob Reynolds

1972 John Sergi

1977 Jeff Laha

1977 Tracy Rietzke

Decade of the 1980’s

1980 Mark Spears

1982 Scott Carmichael

1984 Steve Rivers

1986 David Frederick

1988 Bill Smith

1988 Ray Kujawa

1988 Tim Bellew

1989 Tim Parker

Decade of the 1990’s

1991 Howard Alexander

1992 Jeff Wells

1997 Fred Goodnight

1998 Michael White

1999 Marshall Lloyd

1999 Matthew Broyles

Decade of the 2000’s

2000 Danny Thomas

2000 Tony Depa

2000 Blake Turner

2000 Trent Ainsworth

2001 Jay Morton

2001 Tyler Christensen

2001 Nate Lesovsky

2001 Scott Schmidt

2003 Jeremiah Webb

2006 Scott Brown

2008 Chris Gold

Coaches

1950’s Franklin Eugene Bissell

1960’s Ken Cochran

1970’s Randy St. Clair

1980’s Jerry Jones

These men all had a story to tell and these books are continuing the tradition through anecdotal histories of attending Kansas Wesleyan University, a small Methodist college located in Salina, Kansas, the Heart of the Midwest. The impact of coaches, teammates, teachers, and friends upon those treasured years of college and the hereafter of so-called real life are revealed sharing What It Meant to be a Coyote!

It is an honor to be able to pass on their stories through Book I and now, Book II.

Decade of the 1920’s

Alexander Brown Mackie

Coach 1921-1938

Hometown: Athens, Ohio

Deceased: 1894-1966

The research for Coach Mackie comes from Saturday’s Myrmidons, the History of Kansas Wesleyan Football 1893-1972 by Ron Smith, the Kansas Wesleyan Advance, tales related by KWU Hall of Fame members who played for Mackie—LaVerne Dickerson, Emice Dyck and Gilbert Gib Robinson, and the Salina Journal, particularly the Sport Chaff column written by Sports Editor Stu Dunbar.

In the spring of 1915, KWU decided to enter the Kansas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (KIAA) in all sports. Every college in Kansas with the exception of Kansas University and Kansas State formed the conference.

Emporia State Teachers College, Fort Hays Normal College, Cooper (Sterling), Fairmont (Wichita State), St. Marys of St. Marys, Bethany, Bethel, Friends, Baker, College of Emporia, Washburn, Pittsburg State Teachers College, McPherson, St. Benedicts, Ottawa, Southwestern, and Kansas Wesleyan University. St. Johns and Kansas City College were affiliated members.

The KIAA had been a disaster for the Coyotes. Of the four seasons played (WWI, 1918, season cancelled) KWU did not win a conference game in three of them (1916 0-7, 1917 0-6, 1919 2-4, 1920 0-3-3).

Beginning in the fall of 1921, KWU decided to hire a full-time Coach/Athletic Director and Director of Physical Education. The result of their national search for the right man was Alexander Brown Mackie, Ohio Wesleyan, B.A., 1919. Born in Gazam, Pennsylvania, A.B. played football at Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport, PA. He moved on to Ohio Wesleyan earning two letters in baseball although spending time during World War I in military service. In the spring of 1919, he signed a baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians; however that Fall, Mackie made his career choice by accepting the coaching position at Athens High School, Athens, Ohio. He made an immediate impact as Athens had never distinguished itself particularly in athletics. His football team went 17-1 over the next two seasons and the basketball team rose Athens to national prominence by finishing in sixth place in the National Prep Basketball Tournament held in Chicago, Illinois. KWU had found the right man (and woman) as A.B. and Ruth headed for Salina to direct the Physical Education Department and A.B. would coach football, basketball and track.

It did not take long for the academic administrator, Dean A.H. King, to recognize what a motivator he had in his young coach. A.B. taught psychology in addition to his other duties as he combined tremendous coaching logic with psychological motivational methods. During his first year he scheduled Player Nights where he invited area high school players to attend games and he was out recruiting immediately to any town or community or farm where a prospect could be pointed out to him. He remembered those high school players and went after them for the 1922 season. But first he had to get by 1921. His Wesleyan team and Salina were a long way from his powerful high school teams back in Athens, Ohio. He had convinced the KWU administration that it would be possible to win in Salina; but the 1921 opponents didn’t feel that way at all. Mackie was optimistic as usual, but his players were mostly freshmen and sophomores, many of them suited up on a varsity team for the first time. The facts of football were Wesleyan had only won 25 games in the last 16 years and for the past four years had only won three games in four years as members of the KIAA.

The Indian Colleges across the country were among the best football programs in the nation. There was Carlisle with the fabulous Jim Thorpe, who gained national acclaim and attention; however Thorpe had attended Haskell before moving on to Carlisle. And first team up on the 1921 schedule was the Haskell Indian Institute, one of the most powerful football programs in Kansas. Those Indians poured it on the Mackie youngsters 89-0. Somehow Coach Mackie had the greenhorns ready to play by the next week when they faced Sterling College. It was a closer game, but Sterling scored one touchdown. KWU did not, 6-0. Next up was another powerful team, the Fairmont (WSU) Wheatshockers who had outscored KWU 72-6 over the last five seasons. A strange and unusual incident brought out the fire and determination in Coach Mackie. During the first quarter, there was a quick whistle and the Coyotes stopped play while a WSU runner proceeded to the end zone. The quarter ended and the officials decided to let the score stand. Mackie protested vehemently and when the referees had 6-0 posted on the scoreboard, he took his team off the field. There were no following wins for the Coyotes in 1921 and only one score as the Bethany Swedes triumphed 16-6 in the final contest of the season leaving KWU with a 0-8 overall record and 0-7 in the KIAA.

Mackie was recruiting. He spent the year combing Kansas looking for quick lineman and fast running backs. He was a salesman with the ability to convince young men that Kansas Wesleyan was the place for them to pursue playing collegiate athletics. Defense was his first priority and it remained so for the next seventeen years.

Pete Phillippi, (Solomon, Kansas, and future Hall of Fame member for both the Kansas State High School Activities Association and Kansas Wesleyan) tells of Coach Mackie coming to see him while Pete was out plowing in the fields. As Pete tells the story of how Mackie came walking through the field up to where Pete was guiding the horses, Coach finished talking with him and asked Pete how to get back to Highway 40.

Pete says I pointed and told him the way to go. Then Pete says that according to Coach Mackie when he was telling about recruiting Pete, Mackie would say,

Pete just picked up the plow and pointed the direction, so I knew Wesleyan had to have him!

Pete Phillippi continues, I always liked that story a lot, until I heard it again ten years later when Coach Mackie told the same story, except it was about Doc Watson.

In 1922, the Coyotes were better opening up the season against College of Emporia, defending KIAA champions. It was a loss 14-0, but nothing like most predictions. Next up was Sterling and this year the Coyotes prevailed 7-0 ending a seventeen game losing streak going on over three seasons. Only one more victory remained over St. Mary in the mud and rain 6-0. But the defense was more than a little better as indicated by the scores, Fairmont 3-0; Fort Hays 3-0; McPherson 13-10; Friends 16-0 although the Coyotes fumbled five times inside the Friends five yard line making Coach Mackie very, very dissatisfied; Baker 26-7 and Bethany 20-0 for a final record of 2-7 overall and in the KIAA.

Coach Mackie was not used to losing. His teams had three losing records all in his first three years at KWU. 1923 began with the first opening season victory since 1908, fifteen years ago, a 27-7 win over Bethel. Then this team rolled up a 49-0 shutout over St. Johns of Winfield, the largest margin of scoring in KWU history. Next up was Topeka Washburn and the Coyotes prevailed again 16-0. Undefeated and leading the KIAA with Fort Hays coming up fourth and Chet Taylor boomed a 40 yard field goal (record) giving KWU a 3-0 lead. It wasn’t enough as Hays matched it with another 40 yard field goal and a final 3-3 tie.

At 3-0-1, KWU was positioned for a run at the KIAA title; however this is where the nightmare began. At 0-0 in the fourth quarter, a McPherson back broke free after being held up at the line of scrimmage and went 72 yards for the winning score. Next week Friends too went 71 yards for a 6-0 win. The nightmare continued as Wesleyan’s Sam Beck kicked a field goal tying the score 3-3 against St. Mary, but dang it, the Irish ran back the ensuing kick-off 95 yards for the seven point win. 0-0 against Baker until the Orange defensive back stepped in front of a Coyote pass and returned it all the way for another 7-0 loss.

Four games. Four big plays. Four Coyote defeats. One blame 40 yard field goal for a tie. Without such luck the Wesleyan men would have been 8-0 on top of the KIAA instead of with the also-rans at 3-4-1.

The worm turned against St. Benedicts as KWU was trailing 6-0 with Benedict’s Ravens on the Coyotes eight yard line and time running out when the Ravens tried to kick a field goal instead of just running out the clock. KWU’s Mike Hilgers, (Coyote track hurdler) leaped over the Raven line, blocked the kick with his midsection and carried the ball over 80 yards for the touchdown and Beck kicked the winning extra point. Hilgers was named All-State, first team at the end of the season.

At 4-4-1, the Coyotes faced Bethany with the opportunity for a winning record. It was not to be as the Swedes controlled the entire game 14-0. This would be Mackie’s last losing season as a football coach.

It was Coach Mackie who suffered most during the first years of his football program when his players were just not quite up to the high standards of the rest of the Kansas Intercollegiate Athletic Association. He was a proud man who suffered through the bitter losses of 1921, 1922 and 1923. He bore the responsibility and frustration of those early seasons.

Under Coach Mackie’s guidance the football teams rapidly improved until his Coyotes ruled the Kansas Conference winning championships in 1927, 1929 and 1931 plus three more back-to-back-to-back crowns in 1934-1935 and 1936. Nearly fifty percent of KWU’s championship football teams were produced during the Mackie years. His life-time record at Kansas Wesleyan was 78-52-13 with almost half of his losses coming during the first five seasons when he was building the football program. Mackie is the only KWU coach to have an undefeated season, and he had three of them, the 1927 squad going undefeated and un-scored on. Those who have played football at Kansas Wesleyan since and those who will play here in the future owe the proud tradition of the Coyotes to Alexander Brown Mackie.

Coach Mackie coached basketball as well, but not quite so well as he coached football. Still he won 109 (1938) games, a record that stood for 32 years until eclipsed by Coach Ken Cochran who won 111 (1970) games. Mackie’s cagers won two KCAC championships in 1933 and his last season 1938 when they went to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Championship Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri.

His track teams did not win the Kansas Conference title, but were always competitive in all smaller meets held throughout the conference, especially in the sprint events with runners such as Martin Isaacson, Rupel Perkins, Gib Robinson, and Doc Watson.

A devout physical culturist, Mackie continued to study while at Wesleyan taking graduate work at the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University and the Kansas Colleges.

In March 1938, while the track team was in session, Alexander Brown Mackie resigned his positions at Kansas Wesleyan University after seventeen years as Head Coach and Director of the Men’s Physical Education Department. His wife, Director of the Women’s Physical Education Department, resigned as well. In his statement for the press, A.B. announced that he had purchased half of the Brown Business College and upon entering into partnership with Perry Brown, the college would be renamed Brown Mackie College and A.B. would become the Dean. Another college would be opening immediately at 730 Armstrong, Kansas City, Kansas. Mr. Brown had offered the opportunity a year ago, but A.B. wanted to wait until Wesleyan’s financial campaign was completed. With over 300 students in Salina, the