Drew
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Article from 2015 but this is a really really good read on UConn Football player Gardner Dow, who died mid-game playing for UConn in the 1919 season opener @ New Hampshire:
Column: Remembering Gardner Dow
Ninety-six years ago, Sept. 27 marked one of the darkest days in the history of UConn athletics.
Before being known as the University of Connecticut Huskies, UConn was known as the Connecticut Agricultural College Aggies. After taking a hiatus from playing football due to World War I, the Aggies would take on the University of New Hampshire in their 1919 season opener in Durham, New Hampshire.
It was in that game that the Aggies and Connecticut Agricultural College lost Gardner Dow, a 20-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut. According to an Oct. 3, 1919 article from The Hartford Courant, Dow suffered severe head trauma when his head hit the knee of a New Hampshire player as Dow made an open-field tackle in the fourth quarter.
Dow was removed from the field and looked after at a nearby fraternity house, where his condition rapidly deteriorated and died at 7 p.m. After surviving World War I as a member of the Navy, the CAC junior died playing the game that he loved.
In a sad state of events, Dow was not even originally supposed to suit up for the Aggies that sad September day.
According to the 85th anniversary article on Dow’s death from the UConn Advance, The Advance stated that The Connecticut Campus (now known as The Daily Campus) originally ruled that Dow would not play due to an ankle injury.
Column: Remembering Gardner Dow
Ninety-six years ago, Sept. 27 marked one of the darkest days in the history of UConn athletics.
Before being known as the University of Connecticut Huskies, UConn was known as the Connecticut Agricultural College Aggies. After taking a hiatus from playing football due to World War I, the Aggies would take on the University of New Hampshire in their 1919 season opener in Durham, New Hampshire.
It was in that game that the Aggies and Connecticut Agricultural College lost Gardner Dow, a 20-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut. According to an Oct. 3, 1919 article from The Hartford Courant, Dow suffered severe head trauma when his head hit the knee of a New Hampshire player as Dow made an open-field tackle in the fourth quarter.
Dow was removed from the field and looked after at a nearby fraternity house, where his condition rapidly deteriorated and died at 7 p.m. After surviving World War I as a member of the Navy, the CAC junior died playing the game that he loved.
In a sad state of events, Dow was not even originally supposed to suit up for the Aggies that sad September day.
According to the 85th anniversary article on Dow’s death from the UConn Advance, The Advance stated that The Connecticut Campus (now known as The Daily Campus) originally ruled that Dow would not play due to an ankle injury.
