An old new sport: A century ago, field ball made its debut as a varsity sport in Frederick County, where it flourished before eventually vanishing

Aug. 25—On Wednesday, the first public high school varsity girls flag football games in Maryland history will be held at Frederick High School.

It's a fitting year for Frederick County to be a trailblazer for a new girls high school fall sport, considering it did a similar thing 100 years earlier.

On Oct. 11, 1923, field ball — an 11-on-11, outdoor game in which players used their hands to pass the ball and throw it into the goal for points — made its debut as a new girls high school sport in Frederick County.

Two games were played that day. Host Frederick beat Thurmont 13-0, and host Middletown beat Brunswick 5-4. These were the first field ball games in Maryland to be played outside of Baltimore County, according to an Oct. 12, 1923 Frederick Daily News article.

Other Maryland counties soon began playing the sport, and it remained an athletic mainstay for girls in the state well into the late 1940s.

But field ball eventually died out as a high school sport for girls in Maryland. The reasons are unclear.

These days, the sport is all but forgotten.

The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, the governing organization for public high school sports in the state, does include field ball state champions from 1946 to 1948 in its fall record book.

Frederick High is among the state field ball champions listed in that record book, and vestiges from that once-mighty program remain.

Some of them were discovered by Frank Strakonsky, Frederick High's longtime cross-country coach, at an estate auction at the Frederick Fairgrounds a few years back. Strakonsky bought some field ball medals awarded to a Frederick athlete by the Playground Athletic League, which was the governing body for Maryland high school sports before the MPSSAA existed.

"To come across something like that, that old, that was something," Strakonsky said. "And especially having the tie to Frederick High School as it did."

The medals are now displayed in a trophy case at the school.

Also, state championship field ball banners for 1937, 1938, 1947 and 1948 hang on a wall in Frederick High School's gym. A few years ago, they piqued the curiosity of some Middletown High School boys basketball players who visited Frederick for a road game.

"They were talking about it, trying to figure out what [field ball] was, and I explained it to them," said longtime Frederick girls lacrosse coach and school historian Brandon Brewbaker. "They were like, 'That's pretty neat.'"

Explaining the sport

So what was field ball?

A 1939-40 rule book on women's athletics, which has sections for field ball as well as soccer and speedball, provides answers. Its field ball section was originated by Louis R. Burnett, M.D., who was director of health and physical education in Baltimore, and includes revisions made by the "Soccer Committee" in 1937.

"Field ball is practically basketball with rules adapted to a soccer field," according to the book, which was published for the National Section of Women's Athletics of The American Association For Health, Physical Education and Recreation. "It has many points in common with soccer, but is perhaps more strenuous as the play is more continuous."

The official ball was a soccer ball, although a basketball or volleyball could be used by mutual agreement of the coaches.

Games were usually played on a soccer field. Goals had upright posts that were eight yards apart on the goal line and a crossbar that was eight feet from the ground. Scoring circles were semicircles that each had a radius of 15 yards from the center of each goal.

An official team consisted of five forwards, three halfbacks, two fullbacks and the running guard, according to the rule book. All players except the running guard, who had to stay in the semicircle in front of the goal, were free to go into any part of the field.

A game started with a throw-off, and the team that took it had to line up at or behind the field's halfway line. The ball was thrown from the center of the field with or without a run-up to the halfway line. The throw-off needed to travel at least five yards into the opponent's half of the field.

The ball had to be thrown or bounced to a teammate — no handoffs allowed. A person catching the ball or picking it up had to throw it within three seconds.

Defenders needed to be at least five yards away from throwers when trying to guard them, except when throwers were in the scoring circle. In that case, a defender could engage in "basketball guarding," standing close to the thrower, although contact with the ball or thrower wasn't allowed.

An attacking team got two points for a ball thrown into the goal from outside the scoring circle and one point for a ball thrown into the goal from inside the scoring circle. A goal on a penalty free throw was worth one point.

Also, a defending team earned one point if an opponent threw the ball over the crossbar, except if the ball hit any part of a defender's body or clothing in transit.

An article written by then-Allegany County High School physical director Minerva Stern for the February 1924 edition of Mind and Body, a monthly physical education journal, thought field ball helped prepare girls for basketball in the winter.

And while a 1923 Frederick News-Post article called field ball a "substitute" for volleyball as a fall sport for girls, Stern mentioned another target.

"Field ball seems to have stepped into existence to answer the problem of how to finance hockey teams in high schools," Stern wrote.

No special equipment was required. Just a ball, a field and goals.

In the girls soccer section of its fall record book, the MPSSAA lists public school field ball championships contested from 1946 to 1948 and calls the sport a "precursor to girls soccer."

But Sheldon Shealer, a Frederick High School grad and local sports historian, said field ball was sort of a variation of team handball, which was an outdoor sport but now is an indoor sport at the Olympics.

"[Field ball] just became a sport that schools around the state of Maryland offered as an extension of their physical education and curriculum," Shealer said.

Just like many of this year's Frederick County flag football players, the county's field ball players 100 years ago were novices in need of instruction. One such learning session took place at Frederick High School on Sept. 17, 1923 when instructor Betty Boyle explained the game to a group of 70 girls.

A Frederick Daily News article about this introduction said Boyle gave "a blackboard talk in which she outlined some of the fundamental plays of the new game."

Frederick players proved to be quick learners, going 4-1-1 during the 1923 regular season and capturing the county crown by beating Middletown 5-1 in a tiebreaker game held at Frederick High on Nov. 22. That win avenged Frederick's 7-4 loss to Middletown earlier that season.

After that triumph, The Frederick News-Post reported that Frederick was set to "go on a tour," venturing to Allegany County and the Eastern Shore to face teams from those areas. The paper also said each Frederick player would be awarded a P.A.L. gold medal because the games were played under the auspices of the Playground Athletic League.

This wasn't the final field ball game played in Frederick County during 1923, though. Frederick County had a league for smaller schools comprised of Emmitsburg and Liberty High Schools and Myersville, New Market and Walkersville Junior High Schools, according to the Frederick Daily News.

Walkersville won the small schools title by concluding its unbeaten season with a 3-0 win over Liberty (from Libertytown) on Nov. 27.

County crowns would become commonplace for Frederick High, which was called the Orange and Black (a nod to the team's colors at one time) and Cadettes in articles about the team.

"Frederick High, from the get-go, was an absolute power in the sport," Shealer said. "First on the county level, largely because of the size of the school relative to all the other schools. That was the number one driver. You basically had the equivalent of today's 4As playing a group of 1As. So it's no surprise that Frederick High dominated."

Based on records he compiled, Shealer said Frederick's field ball team went 75-1-1 from 1923 to 1939 and won 17 county crowns and four state titles from 1923 to 1948.

When field ball resumed after a shutdown of athletics prompted by World War II, Frederick continued to thrive. After falling to Kenwood in the 1946 state championship game, Frederick won state crowns in 1947 and 1948, beating Annapolis in the Class A championship game both years.

Another state title contender from Frederick County was Middletown, which lost to Federalsburg in the 1946 Class D finals and to Centreville in the 1947 Class C finals.

The MPSSAA doesn't list any field ball state champs past 1948. And Brewbaker said the last records he has for field ball at Frederick High are from 1953.

So, what happened to field ball?

Shealer took a stab at answering the question of what happened to the sport, pointing out how there appeared to be a downsizing of female athletics during that era.

Said Shealer: "A lot of the sports that the girls played were no longer played in the sense of a full season but rather contested in a one-day field day, where they would literally get every high school to send girls to like Baker Park, and they would play volleyball and field ball and they'd do all of the stuff in one day, and that became the look and feel for a lot of the early 1950s that replaced the more organized, season-long field ball."

At some point, though, field ball stopped being contested as a varsity sport.

These days, of course, Frederick County girls have no shortage fall sports to choose from. For decades, county high schools have offered soccer, field hockey, volleyball, golf and cross-country each autumn.

And this year, 100 years after field ball made its debut in the county, flag football joins that list.