The long decline of Haskell Indian Nations University's all-conquering football team

Haskell, once the nation’s most prominent Native American college team, used to beat the likes of Michigan State. But now the program is no more

State Route 10 in Kansas ambles from the western suburbs of Kansas City into Lawrence, a college town of 90,000 with the 28,000-student University of Kansas and the 1,000-student Haskell Indian Nations University, founded in 1884 for Native Americans.

Route 10 tightens from a four-lane highway and becomes 23rd Street in Lawrence, and off the street loom two 5,500-seat concrete grandstands and a noble stone archway. This is Haskell Memorial Stadium, which was dedicated on 30 October, 1926, 90 years ago this month. Haskell’s male students provided much of the labor to keep the cost to $250,000.

When the stadium opened, Haskell had become the nation’s predominant college football team for Native Americans. But the football program was suspended last year because of rising costs, and the prospects of a revival seem like a long shot – an enormous disappointment to those who played there.

“Football gives the young native athletes an option to play at the next level and to play for the only Native American college football team in the country,” Kelvin Starks, a 2007 Haskell graduate who was an offensive lineman and assistant coach at the school, told the Guardian. “It would be worth it to bring back the program, because it provides young native athletes a chance to be successful in life. I truly believe that making the decision to play football at Haskell has provided me with everything I have today.”

Starks, a member of the Seneca nation who majored in American Indian studies, lives on a Hopi reservation in northern Arizona, where he works at the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians. He met his wife at Haskell; the couple have two children, whom they like to call “the Haskell Rascals.” He had not heard of Haskell before he was recruited.

Cody Wilson, another 2007 graduate, had heard of Haskell’s football heritage before he decided to play there, in part because his uncle ran for the Haskell cross-country team. Wilson, of the Choctaw Nation, is now the lead counselor for the Coeur d’Alene tribe’s vocational recreational program in Worley, Idaho.

Wilson, a wide receiver at Haskell, told the Guardian that many of those who participated in the football program had become “positive role models for our youth.” He believes the return of football would generate more leadership, and increase school pride, student retention and income. It would decrease the number of students on academic probation, he said.

“Sadly, I do not think we will see a revival anytime soon,” he said. “The current leadership and Board of Regents don’t want football to exist at Haskell. A good man with a PhD in education once told me that ‘football is the window through which the university is viewed,’ and if that is true, we have allowed another window to be closed – not by decision of the government, not by decision of the students, not by a decision of the tribes, but this time our own people, our own Haskell blood.”

Haskell had fielded a football team since 1896, according to Lords of the Prairie, a paper written in 2001 by Raymond Schmidt for the College Football Historical Society, but became nationally prominent after the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, whose most famous football player was the legendary Jim Thorpe, closed in 1918.

Led by the powerful fullback John Levi (who Thorpe called “the greatest athlete I have ever seen”), the 1923 Haskell team played a barnstorming schedule that included a November contest at the new Yankee Stadium in New York and another on Christmas in Los Angeles – with two games in between. Haskell finished with an 11-2-1 record.

The 1926 team was probably Haskell’s finest. Playing opponents that included Boston College (a tie) and Michigan State (a victory), Haskell compiled a 12-0-1 record, winning their first four games by a combined score of 215-0 and finishing with 558 points, the most in the nation.

Haskell went on to play the bigger school across town, the Kansas Jayhawks, falling in a game at home in 1930, 33-7, but surprising Kansas a year later, 6-0, before 11,000 fans in the first night game at home in Jayhawks history. Phog Allen, the famous basketball coach who doubled as the Kansas athletic director, borrowed the lights from Haskell for the game.

But football was de-emphasized as part of a reorganization. Haskell dropped football in 1938 and would not resume fielding a team until 1990, at a much lower level – and with much less success. Between 2011 and 2014, the Fighting Indians won only three of 38 games.

Citing costs and safety, Haskell announced in May 2015 that it was suspending the football program. Todd Davis, then the athletic director, told the university’s Board of Regents last October that the program could only be revived at about $500,000 a year.

“I believe there are certain times when you really need to take a step back and look at the direction you are going,” Haskell president Venida Chenault said on the school’s website. “The university has such a long-standing tradition with football, but I believe it was time to do some real soul-searching and develop a long-term plan for the program.”

The suspension at the 1,000-student institution was extended into 2016. Chenault and other school officials did not respond to requests from the Guardian for interviews about the status of the program, although sources at Haskell said a revival of the football program was not even being discussed. Davis, the athletic director, resigned in May.

Aaron Circle Bear, a sophomore at Haskell who is working towards an associate degree, told the Guardian that he would support bringing back football – not just because of its historical significance, but also because homecoming was one of the biggest events of the semester.

“In the history books of the university,’’ Circle Bear said, “the events would begin with a parade that would take place on Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence. Over the years the parade was eventually moved to campus, but anytime that the homecoming was taking place, many alumni would choose that weekend to return to campus. If football was brought back to Haskell, this would be a great opportunity to have alumni return to campus to help support the Haskell Foundation. Also, I think it would build the camaraderie of the young men of their formative years of ages 18 to 22, and they would form relationships equivalent to brotherhood.”

The benefits of the football program are even clearer to Adam Staley, who was an offensive lineman who played at Haskell from 2006 to 2008 before earning a degree in business administration. Staley, 32, also of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said he probably would have gone to another school had Haskell not offered football.

“I’d love to see the program come around again, because I know what it does for guys who play, and I know what it does for guys as far as networking,” Staley, a field sales representative with a firm in Kansas City, told the Guardian.

Staley grew up in Seminole, Oklahoma, with little awareness of his Native American heritage other than a curio cabinet kept by his great-grandmother. Staley transferred from Southern Nazarene University, in Bethany, Oklahoma, because he wanted to continue playing football. “That’s where their heart is,” he said of his Haskell team-mates. “Yes, it is hard to compete. Two years in a row, we won only two games each year. But you’re playing football, and you’re not the worst team in the nation, either.”

Football helped to bond all Native American nations represented at Haskell, Staley said. He remembers a road game against Waldorf College, in Forest City, Iowa, where the Fighting Indians dressed only 22 players. They won in overtime on a blocked extra point. “And that was an experience a lot of players had never experienced before,” he said. “Even though it was a small-time college game, it was huge.”

Like Starks, Staley met his future wife at Haskell. Two of his football team-mates were groomsmen at Staley’s wedding – and they still keep in touch. A few younger Native American boys in his hometown became interested in Haskell because he played football there.

Even in the years when Haskell did not field a football team, the stadium played host to high school football games. According to Jancita Warrington, the director of the Haskell Cultural Center and Museum, the money raised at stadium events help to fund public parks in Lawrence.

“The stadium was not just used by Haskell; it was used by the community over time,” she told the Guardian.

Warrington said a celebration of the stadium’s 90th anniversary is being planned for next spring. Perhaps recreations of some of the original events at the dedication of the stadium will be held, she said. But it won’t be football season.

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