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The Ice Bowl was a college football game played from 1949 to 1952 in Fairbanks Alaska. Sgt. Bernard L. Anderson of Ladd Air Base, the editor of the Midnight Sun, and Walter Raschick, sports editor of the Fairbanks Sun Star's predecessor the Polar Star, proposed a bowl game between Ladd Air Force Base (now called Fort Wainwright) and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The idea received the approval of the base's commanding general and UA President Charles Bunnell. The first game was played on January 1, 1949.
The game was played on New Year’s weekend each year. Alaska Fairbanks had a small student enrollment and most of the males had never played organized football before. It was a tremendous sacrifice for the students to participate. Following four years of bitter cold games, the bowl was discontinued due to waning student support.
Lost to history is the fact that an earlier Ice Bowl that gained national attention was originally played in 1938. The game was the brainchild of Father Bernard Hubbard, former Loyola, CA athletic director turned missionary. Hubbard, known as the “Glacier Priest” had also become an explorer along with a team from the University of Santa Clara. Among the Santa Clara exploring team was former Santa Clara player including Ken Chisholm who coached and assisted in preparing the native Eskimos of King Island for the game.
The actual game was played on January 2, 1938 with the Ougruits defeating the Airgrits, 7-6. All 182 island inhabitants attended the game. Father Hubbard's game, however, was delayed five days by an act of God- the field floated away. "There has been no zero weather yet," he said, "and when the ice formed on the village side of the island, a gale came along and drove it out of sight. Now there's nothing but water everywhere.”
From the Associated Press:
Eskimos Take Up Grid Game, Will Stage Bowl Tilt
KING ISLAND (Alaska), Dec. 1 (AP) Coach Ken Chisholm announced today that two teams of King Island Eskimos will meet in the Ice Bowl on this precipitous Islet New Year's Day for the football championship of the Arctic.
Both teams will use the Notre Dame system, the kind of football Chisholm played at Santa Clara before he joined the Rev. Bernard Hubbard. "the glacier priest," on Alaskan exploring trips.
Father Hubbard and his fellow Jesuit, Father Bellimen La Fortune, missionary here more than thirty years, reported the King Islanders have taken to football like the proverbial baby seal takes to water, and that Chisholm's Ice Bowl classic should take rank with the continent's Rose Bowl, Sun Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and other bowls, come January 1st.
The Hubbard party, equipped with photographic and meteorologic apparatus has been showing the Eskimos motion pictures of famous football games in the United States, and Coach Chisholm said his players have been quick to learn the rudiments of the game.
The men and boys also are taking boxing lessons from another former Santa Clara athlete, Ed Levin. Father La Fortune and Hubbard said they believed the sports, coupled with corrective physical exercises, will do much to improve the stamina of the Bering Sea Islanders and help overcome the young people's inherited lung weakness without changing their diets and habits of living.
Father Hubbard's game, however, was delayed five days by an act of God- the field floated away. "There has been no zero weather yet," he said, "and when the ice formed on the village side of the island, a gale came along and drove it out of sight. Now there's nothing but water everywhere.”
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| The Information from this site was taken from: |
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University of Alaska Denali Student Yearbook, 1950, 1952
UAF Had a Football Team? Nate Raymond Sun Star
Fairbanks: A Gold Rush Town That Beat The Odds By Dermot Cole Epicenter Press, 1999
The Cornerstone on College Hill Terrence Cole University of Alaska Press, 1994
Associated Press United Press International University of Alaska, Fairbanks
The Family of the late Sgt. Ray Keelin
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