Front row (from left): Don Haley, Art Pratt, Devere Ranville, Don Panott, Clffl Jacque, Mike Goggins.
Second row (from lee): Paul Bennett, Bob Harbin, Paul Ehien, Jerry Hariand, Clete LaSalle, Art Dietrick, Will LaVaiie, Dick Lawrence, Bob Gartland.
Third row (from left): Coach Tom Smith, Jim Behan, Don Damon, Bob Warner, Joe Doerr, Bill Sheeran, John Curtin, Dave Jennings, John Samida, Don Greyerbiehi, Bill Manda, manager.
Fourth row (from left): Norm Manssur, Funce Etue, Jim Brown, Jeny O’Rourke, Sam Snaveiy, Jim Halstead, Wanen Ballard, Ciare Hengesbaugh, Jack Kendall, Joe Swaies, Ed Kline, Jack Christie. Even the water boy was good.
Everything about the 1941 St. Michael football team was top-grade – from the revered coach, Tom Smith, to the multi-talented captain, Clete LaSalle, all the way down to a grade-school water boy named Mike Goggins, who would go on to become one of the school’s best players in his own day.
The ’41 squad was St. Mike’s 10th straight City Parochial League champion and the second undefeated, untied team in Smith’s six years as coach. But Smith singled it out as “the best balanced team” he’d ever coached and said, “We’ve had some high-scoring teams in the past, but none was as versatile as this.”
The Mikes went 8-0, outscoring their opponents, 158-22 and shutting out half of them.
They crowned the season with a 37-2 thrashing of Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart in the Saginaw Valley Parochial League championship game at Atwood Stadium.
There seemed to be no weaknesses.
The line was experienced and big. Junior right guard Jerry Harland was the lightest at 155 pounds but had been starting since his freshman year. Senior tackle Dick Lawrence weighed 180, and other surviving members of the team say senior center Art Dietrich anchored the front at 200; right end Bob Harbin was at least 190 and senior right tackle Paul Ehlen ranged anywhere from 170 to 250, depending on whose memory you’re tapping.
“Most of the guys on the first-team line were 165 to 190 pounds,” asserted Jim Behan, a 165-pound junior backup center and the team’s unofficial historian.
Behind that wall, Devere Ranville was a small (5-7, 150) but smart quarterback who knew what to do with the ball in the single-wing formation.
“I could throw short passes over the center and off to the end,” said Ranville. “Paul Bennett could catch anything. Then there was (right halfback) Don Parrott, a hard hitting kid, and (left halfback) Cliff Jake, who was tremendously fast. “But mostly, l handed the ball to Clete.”
LaSalle was 170-pound fullback who “could hi like a 250-pounder and throw the ball 60 yards,” Ranville said.
“He could pass, run like a deer and was also a good kicker,” said Harland. “When he went back, they didn’ know whether he was going to run or kick the ball.”
Like most St. Michael players, LaSalle deflected all praise to Smith.
“He was my biggest influence,” LaSalle said in November 1997, four months before his death. “I had the talent and he told me what to do with it. He formed it all for me. I just looked up to him so much.”
Smith readied his Class C team for the season by pitting it against Class A powers Northern and Central.
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