Little Mites

The Masonic Home football program started in 1927. Most of the boys had never seen a football which was just fine because they didn't have one to start with. They used a Clabber Girl baking power can stuffed into a sock and taped together for their first football. Rusty Russell instituted sports for everyone, girls (tennis at first) and boys (football at first). Other sports were added later along with academic competitions like Debate and Speech.

Wheatie Sealey came to The Home two years after football did when he was six. "Someone handed me a football and said I was going to be on the 75-lb team and I'd never seen a football team in my life. Most of the time we played barefooted and back in that time we all wore coveralls. The boys on the high school team were our heroes." The little Milk Slimes played an annual game against the big Milk Slimes. Every Saturday they would play other local teams, usually elementary and junior high school teams at Sycamore Park.

"We always thought we could beat 'em," said Wheatie. "We came up from the 75-lb team only thinking we were supposed to win. That's what we thought. People always said those boys were so much bigger and we said yeah, but didn't ever think that we couldn't beat them. We always thought we could beat anybody. Didn't make any difference who they were or how big they were. We thought we could beat them."

Little Mites photo