Thursday, March 1, 2012

The WWC way

Technically speaking, I am not a lone arranger.  I have someone who works with me in the archives.  Here at WWC the vast majority of students have a job.  It's part of the triad: work-service-learning--which makes this place unique.

Amanda is in her third semester in archives.  Her main project this semester has been to put together an exhibit about the Farm School/WWC Junior College football team.  The team was started in 1922 and lasted until 1947.  It was never well-funded and always lacked for proper equipment.  Uniforms were raggedy.  Some years, the team barely had enough players to fill the roster.  Some years they didn't, and so they didn't play. 

But the Aggies played enough to develop a serious rivalry with cross-county schools Christ School and Ashville School.  In 21 contests with the AS Blues, the Aggies won only 1 game, tied 2 at 0-0.

Former farm manager and beloved WWC icon, Ernst Laursen, donated a football from the 1934 game with Christ School and a helmet.  Amanda found some good photographs and wrote captions and text about the team from research in the Owl & Spade and The Echo.  The school/college also had a pep band and cheerleaders. 

There are no cheerleaders now, nor pep band (but there is an awesome step team that performs at half-time during basketball games on occasion).  Mountain biking and canoeing has replaced the resource-intensive football and baseball.  And for one short period of time, football reigned where cows and chicken graze.

It's a little chaotic at the moment, but very soon, this jumble will become a wonderful homage to the long-gone football team.  Amanda has put in a lot of time on creating this exhibit.

The exhibit on the Aggie Gridiron should be up soon in the downstairs exhibit case in the library.  Come by and cheer Amanda on as she learns the art of exhibit-making and story-telling.