1932 Tigers Shut Out Three Straight Foes

Before the 1981 Worth County Tigers, which shut out five teams in a row, there was the 1932 Grant City squad, which shut out three opponents in a row and nearly shut out a fourth. Grant City did not become Worth County until 1951; however, for 60 years afterwards, oldtimers from other schools occasionally still referred to them as “Grant City.”

In 1925, Leo Cox restarted the Worth County football program, which had been dormant for the last 15-20 years. We talked one time with Wilbur Osborne about playing for him on the 1932 squad. It was Leo Cox who started the tradition where football players were expected to don their equipment at the school and run from the school, located where the Firehouse is today, half a mile west to Kelso Park to practice. His mentality was that Grant City may not be the biggest school or the most talented, but nobody was going to work harder than they did to prepare for a game. It was a tradition that was continued by Glenn Marr after he took over in 1935 until he left in 1959.

The 1932 Tigers started off slowly, dropping 12-2 to Bethany, which was regarded as a contender for the title of the newly-formed Grand River Conference. In that game, Referee Shorty Lawrence handled some unruly Bethany players by striking one of them, and there was no further dissent.

The next week, Grant City beat an outmanned Clearfield squad 26-0. It was comfortable enough that Grant City was able to play their second string in the fourth quarter, which managed to preserve the shutout. Clearfield was a scrappy squad, but they were no match for the Tigers.

The next week, Grant City played two games within three days, beating Stanberry 7-0 and King City 18-0. The games with Stanberry were always close between the 1930’s and 1970’s, with games being decided by one or two scores and were always good defensive struggles. 

But the toll of playing two football games in three days, unthinkable today, turned out to be too much for the Tigers. There were a ton of injuries from those two games, and the Tigers came into the Albany game shorthanded. Despite that, Grant City put up a brilliant defensive showing and almost pitched its fourth straight shutout; however, Albany pushed over a score in the last few seconds to claim the 6-0 win. It was one of many heartbreaker losses that Grant City and later Worth County would suffer at the hands of the Warriors from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. The Tigers would not beat the Warriors in a football game until 1938, when they beat them 52-0 during their GRC Conference Championship year.