Item Of The Week - 1940s BGSU Football Jersey

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and you are gearing up for Christmas. We are pleased to present our second installment of the Item Of The Week. In celebration of the completion of the 2010-11 BGSU football season this week were are featuring a 1940s BGSU Football jersey. Those who attended the second Centennial Celebration in October got a chance to see this jersey first hand.

For those of you who follow our blog and happen to be Cleveland Browns fans you may notice that this uniform looks similar to the past and current Browns uniforms. As it has been reported in the past the Browns liked the color design so much they adopted it for themselves. According to Mickey Paul Brown liked the look so much he decided to take it back to Cleveland for the Browns.

Mickey was able to share a couple of good stories that go along with this uniform as well. When the Browns were founded in the 1940s they held their annual training camp at BGSU. For several weeks each summer Browns players and Falcon players shared the same field as each team prepared for their upcoming season. This continued for six years (1946-51) before they moved training camp closer to Cleveland.

Mickey also shared a story with us about the Falcons loosing some of their uniforms while traveling. Luckily the teams equipment manager was able to make a call to the Browns equipment manager and have several uniforms sent to BG for the players to wear.

Item Of The Week - Leslie Dawley Autographed Soccer Ball

As we conclude our work for the semester of the course of the next several weeks we have decided to post pictures of some of the items we have come across during our work and provide some of the back story behind the item. Look for at least one item, if not more, a week. If anyone has any requests for pictures please let us know and we will work to find the item and post a picture as well as the story behind it. A big thank you to Mickey for taking time to give us the history behind each of these items.

Leslie Dawley autographed soccer ball

During the 2002 Mid American Conference Soccer Tournament BGSU freshman women's soccer player Leslie Dawley passed away during play due to an asthma attack. Prior to the game Dawley signed this ball. The BGSU archives keeps this ball in memory of Leslie. Dawley had played well during her freshman campaign recording six assists in just eight games. Lawley broke the BGSU record for consecutive games with an assist when she recorded her fifth assist in as many games on October 25, 2002 against Western Michigan. Lawley had become a clutch player for the Falcons as four of her six assists for the season set up game winning goals for the Falcons. We decided to take this first item of the week post to honor the memory of Leslie.

1961-62 BGSU Women's Field Hockey

Thanks to Nancy L. Haines, 1962 graduate of BGSU, for sending the following photo from the 1961 or 1962 BGSU Women's Field Hockey Team. Below are names that Nancy could remember for members of that team.

Front row (L-R): Donna Eubanks, Liz Embree, Karen Nelson

Back row (L-R): Bev Faulk, Nancy Maneely (sure of that one), Carol Lenz, Don't know, Don't know, Liz Bacso.

If anyone has further information about anyone who played on this team, please email us at: bgsusport@gmail.com