30-07-2025
That time Washington went to Washington (state) for training camp
In 1937, its first year after relocating from Boston, Washington's NFL team introduced and endeared itself to the District by training at Anacostia Park.
'I want to invite everyone in town to drop over and watch the boys work out,' Coach Ray Flaherty said in August 1937. 'This is a great team, and I think we will compile a record that will make Washingtonians proud to claim us as a civic representative.'
Washington, which backed up Flaherty's declaration and won the NFL championship that year, relocated its training camp to Ballston Stadium in Arlington the following summer. After six weeks of practice hampered by hot, humid and dusty conditions at the stadium, which was home to the semipro Ballston Skulls, a frustrated Flaherty declared his team would 'train up north next year.' Instead, the team headed 2,500 miles west.
With Washington coming off a disappointing 6-3-2 season, General Manager Jack Espey announced in February 1939 that the team would hold training camp in Flaherty's hometown of Spokane, Washington. It was, The Washington Post reported, the 'longest training jaunt in either professional football or baseball history.'
While NFL teams seeking isolation had begun holding training camp in secluded locations, most clubs remained in their home or neighboring states.
'The Athletic Round Table Club, a sports-minded group of Spokane businessmen promoting sports for charitable purposes, guaranteed the club a substantial sum for training at Spokane, topping a bid previously submitted by Duluth, Minn.,' The Post reported. 'It also is the first time on record, a hasty perusal of records reveals, that any city has sponsored the training program of a pro football club. Spokane, it is believed, will be more suitable for training than Washington and vicinity, which was abandoned because of the intense heat and humidity which handicapped the men last year. The Western city's climate is said to be ideal for football in the later part of August and early September and Flaherty is confident he will lead a well-conditioned group of athletes East.'
Buck O'Neill of the Washington Times-Herald detailed how Spokane lured the team away from prospective training camp hosts in the Midwest. Duluth's chamber of commerce made an initial offer to Washington owner George Preston Marshall, after which the city of Superior, Wisconsin, made a $5,000 bid to host the team. Flaherty visited Superior and advised Marshall to accept the city's offer. Back home in Spokane, where he played football for Gonzaga during his college years, Flaherty mentioned his team's training camp plans and pending offers to friends.
'Why, we'll double that offer,' one of them said. 'If it is worth $5,000 for Miami to have the New York Giants train there, it is easily worth $10,000 to have one of our own boys train his team right here in town.'
Beyond Flaherty's ties to Spokane, several of Washington's players hailed from the Pacific Northwest, including Turk Edwards, Ed Justice, Max Krause and George 'Automatic' Karamatic. Flaherty hired Roy 'Doc' Mauro, who served as a trainer at Gonzaga for the previous 10 years, to assist trainer Roy Baker. Mauro was a lightweight boxer during the 1920s who in 1935 walked more than 80 miles in freezing conditions from Pullman, Washington, to Spokane to fulfill a bet with the Gonzaga football team.
In early August 1939, a group of 11 Washington players and team officials departed Union Station for Spokane via train. Other players joined the traveling party along the three-day journey. Star quarterback Sammy Baugh arranged his own transportation to camp. Washington arrived to a public reception at the Desert Hotel in Spokane before opening practice the next day in nearby Cheney, on the campus of what is now known as Eastern Washington University. And, yeah, everyone was in the best shape of their lives.
'The boys are big — so big that some are practically crowds in themselves,' the Spokane Chronicle's Herb Ashlock reported. 'And they're all in shape — in the fine fettle to warm the cockles of any coach's heart.'
At the start of camp, Marshall predicted that the National Professional Football League would soon 'stretch from coast to coast.'
'Football of tomorrow will not be seriously concerned about long traveling distance,' Washington's owner told reporters.
Over the next month, Washington debuted the use of blocking aprons, which 'give the wearers the appearance of being a combination hockey goalie and a baseball catcher,' according to the Associated Press, and were considered an upgrade over stationary blocking dummies.
'It works,' Flaherty said, 'because the apron wearers can move.'
At one practice, players tested their strength against a pair of horses. The weather was as advertised.
Training camp ended with an intrasquad scrimmage in front of roughly 10,000 fans at Gonzaga, with proceeds going to charity. Washington played exhibition games in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston before returning to D.C. and opening the season at Philadelphia in September.
Washington went 8-2-1, with a loss to the Giants in the regular season finale deciding the Eastern Division title. They returned to Spokane the following summer before relocating to San Diego's Brown Military Academy.
Washington trained at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1946 to 1962 before moving camp to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1963.
