Cal Poly football team took on U.S. Army during World War I. Here’s how the Mustangs did

The California Polytechnic School was still a fledgling institution in 1917.

The first class had graduated a little over a decade before in June 1906, and the San Luis Obispo school had not yet become a college.

Most of what we now know as the academic core of the Cal Poly campus was then mostly farmland.

A photo taken in November 1917 shows a football field without bleachers or lights.

A swing set and flag pole can be seen on the east sideline of the field, where bleachers now stand.

Absent from the hillside is the concrete P that would be first mentioned in student newspaper Polygram in 1919.

Cal Poly’s athletic teams typically played those from other high schools.

However, enrollment dropped in 1917 due to students enlisting to fight in World War I.

That’s how Cal Poly came to play a U.S. Army team attached to a local artillery unit on Thanksgiving Day. The holiday was celebrated later than usual due to the war.

Cal Poly had a split squad at the time, so the seniors played the soldiers.

On the following day, the juniors played Atascadero High School and lost 26-12. It was the third meeting of those two teams.

Here is an excerpt from the Daily Telegram’s coverage of the Cal Poly-Army game, published on Nov. 30, 1917.

Bad Day For The Polytechnic

A large crowd saw the Polytechnic football team go down to an honorable defeat to the team from the 11th Company of Coast Artillery yesterday afternoon at the Poly grounds. The soldiers won by a score of 29 to 0 in a hotly contested game.

The Sammies had much the best of their opponents in weight and played with a rush that in many instances carried them over and through the lines of the lighter antagonists.

The Poly boys showed better team work and generalship were unable to back the army line for any great distance.