Edison football team has had its ups and downs

For 101 years, student athletes at Edison High School have taken to the gridiron in the fall to participate in the uniquely American game of football.

This year, the field adjacent to the high school has not seen any tackling, running, passing or huddling. The program, with too few students signed up to operate safely, shut down for at least one year.

It brought a pause, if not an end, to a century of tradition. Edison over that span has a 434-393-28 record. The team had its ups and downs and some amazing accomplishments.

Edison won the city title 21 times. In recent years, however, the program has seen the other end of the spectrum. It has been 19 seasons since the Edison Tommies have won as many as four games in a season. Last year, they were 1-8.

Beginnings

Edison and Roosevelt joined the ranks of Minneapolis high schools in 1922. Neither had been able in the hustle-bustle of opening a new school to join the city-wide athletics league, and so both played a non-conference schedule.

Edison, with 200 students in four grades, managed a 4-0 record that first year by beating the junior varsities from North and South, the DeLaSalle team and winding up the season by blowing out Roosevelt.

The team, playing in the Minneapolis Conference for the first time in the 1923 season, finished up 2-2-2, ending their season losing to Minneapolis West 5-3 on a last-minute safety.

The 1925 season saw the first homecoming game, and over a hundred alumni returned for the contest.

The school’s yearbook, the Wizard (which was originally called the Nor’Easter) opined on the glories of the sport. “Football, probably more than any other sport, arouses loyalty in one’s school, a desire to follow the game, to see the team in action, and to join the rooters’ old yells.”

Ray Parkins became the coach in 1925 and brought the team to a 5-2 record, led by triple-threat back Aubie Turgeon, who won eight letters as a Tommy. The team lost its last game to Central 13-9, and the Wizard commented, “The Central team outweighed the Blue-Gold squad by many pounds, but this was offset by the fighting spirit of Edison, a characteristic of East Side teams in the past.”

Parkins remained as head coach for 11 years with so-so results, only twice finishing as high as third in the conference.

In 1934, Pete Guzy, a 33-year-old former sports star at East High School, took over the reins of the football program, a position he would hold for the next 32 years. Guzy, a baseball pitcher for East, once struck out 20 players in a game. In football, he quarterbacked the East squad to the city title.

The years under Guzy showed steady improvement in the Tommies’ football prowess, and in 1935, they could have won the conference championship, but their ace quarterback, Marty Trymucha, was disqualified midway through the season because he had become too old to play high school football. Many students in those Depression-era days would drop in and out of school to help support their families.

In 1937 and 1938, Edison won the city title. Those teams featured all-city players such as Tony Jaros, George Rosar and Bill Robertson. They won again in 1943, during World War II.

Clayton Tonnemaker, perhaps the greatest athlete to play football at Edison, graduated in 1945 with a host of honors. He went on to the University of Minnesota where he was an All-American and finished seventh in the Heisman voting despite being a lineman.

Tonnemaker was selected fourth in the NFL draft by Green Bay, and played until he joined the Army as an officer during the Korean War. He retired from pro football in 1954 to become an executive at Cargill. He also did national play-by-play announcing on television.

In the 1948-49 school year, Edison had one of its finest years. Led by Walt Dziedzic, Frank Rog and Dick Keuser, the team went 8-0 and outscored its opponents 173-6, with the lone touchdown coming when the Tommies had their reserves on the field at the end of a blowout.

Guzy’s team won the title the next year, but then the momentum seemed to slip away. Guzy retired to great honors following the 1966-67 season. He had coached for 32 years and won six conference titles and one state championship.

Glory years

Guil Parsons took over the reins of the program in 1968 and the program made another upswing. Edison won city titles in 1974 and 1975 when Parsons retired. 

He was replaced by Niles Schultz who led Minneapolis Edison through perhaps its greatest golden era. In 10 years, Schultz’s teams won six conference championships.

Dan Roff had a ringside seat for those great years, playing for renowned coach Schultz in the late ’70s and then coaching the squad in the ’90s. 

“I remember as a ninth grader going to a game in 1974 between Washburn and Edison. Gil Parsons was the coach. Washburn owned the city championship in those days. I think they had won it about seven times in a row. Well, on this day, Edison was winning.

“The trophy for the city champ in those days was an old railroad bell, a great big bell on wheels. With about five minutes left in the game, a bunch of Edison guys snuck behind the Washburn bench and stole the bell. They were wheeling it around the track when the Washburn fans saw what was going on, and they gave chase. And then the fight was on.

“We didn’t even know it was a city trophy. Washburn had had it so long, we thought it was theirs.”

Edison kept the trophy and began a remarkable run of its own.

“I can think of two reasons,” said Roff. “One was that our youth program was so strong. We had six or seven Park Board teams. The other reason was the DNA of the Northeast kids. They loved sports, and their parents loved sports. Nobody wanted to play us because we were so tough. I guess we were just ornery kids.”

Roff said open enrollment had begun by then, and students from the North Side came to Edison to play football.

The battles with Washburn continued, with Edison winning the city title over the Millers 22-21 in 1977 but then losing in the title game 7-6 in 1978. “That was one of our best teams, I think. We played in Parade Stadium and it had snowed that day. The field was just a quagmire. Washburn went on the win the state title.”

Roff noted that big games in those days were played at Parade Stadium, just west of downtown, because most of the high school fields didn’t have lights. There would sometimes be more than 8,000 fans at the games.

Roff said Schultz had a significant influence on his life. He went to Schultz’s alma mater, Augsburg, where he was all-conference, and even majored in English, which Schultz taught at Edison.

“Niles was such a skillful communicator. He was tough, but he was fair. He never yelled at a player, and he let the players settle some of their disputes among themselves. One of his greatest strengths was that he would be involved in the youth programs, working with the fathers who were the coaches.”

Roff taught English and became Hibbing’s head coach in 1994, and later became the assistant principal and activities director at Fridley High School. 

Jim Carr took over in 1986 for Schultz and led the team to three titles in eight years, and Roff won two titles in his three years at the helm. Jeff Moritko, a star player in the ’70s, coached only one year, but won the city championship, and Mal Edwards coached the team to two championships in 2000 and 2001.

That was the last city title for the team, and the program has been a work in progress since then. 

This story was compiled using a chart created by Jeff Buszta, the unofficial historian for Minneapolis high school sports, interviews, and from yearly updates in the yearbook, the Edison Wizard. In some cases, accounts differed, and the writer made an educated guess.