Return to the 1895 season page

The final game of A&M's 1895 season was a Thanksgiving matchup against a Guilford team with a very limited history of football. Guilford fielded her first team in 1893, winning two games and losing one. Guilford didn't play football for the 1894 season, but they came back in 1895. After having trouble getting enough men together to organize a team, Guilford's first game of the season was played on November 23rd against Trinity High School, shutting the high school team out 58-0 (The Greensboro Patriot, November 27th, 1895, p. 3; The Guilford Collegian, 1895-1896, p. 100).

For a time, it looked like A&M would end their season on the tie with Charlotte. The Press-Visitor reported as late as November 25th that the Farmers had no Thanksgiving game scheduled; the following day, however, the News and Observer reported that there was a game scheduled in Greensboro against Guilford. Similarly, Guilford's Collegian wrote that the game had been organized "About the first of November" (The Press-Visitor, November 25th, 1895, p. 1; News and Observer, November 26th, 1895, p. 5; The Guilford Collegian, 1895-1896, p. 100).

The year before, A&M played Oak Ridge, a local military school, in Greensboro as a Thanksgiving game, and much was made in the papers about the bonds formed with the girls of the Normal and Industrial School (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and the lasting bonds and romantic flings between students. Similar tones came from the papers before the game, reporting plans of a reception with the Normal School girls the evening of the game, though by the dearth of verbose write-ups on the flings of A&M and Normal School girls, the event either did not happen or was significantly less romanced-filled than the year before (The North Carolinian, November 28th, 1895, p. 8).

The second team of A&M was reported to have scheduled a game with Wilson Military Academy (formerly LaFayette Military Academy, of Fayetteville, NC), but the day of the game the Wilson Advance announced a game instead with Spring Hope Academy. Unfortunately, I could find a summary of neither game (The Press-Visitor, November 28th, 1895, p. 1; The Wilson Advance, November 28th, 1895, p. 3).

Reviews of the game are limited. Most newspapers were brief, keeping reports as short as the final score, which was 26-0. The longest description came in the Guilford Collegian, which wrote that "From the start the evidence of long and superior training on the part of the Raleigh boys was manifest." Of Guilford's team, it was said that "The majority of them had never seen a foot ball until this season" and that holding A&M to 26 was a feat that the Guilford boys congratulated themselves on (The Guilford Collegian, 1895-1896, p. 100).

As for stand-out players, "the Greek," Guilford's Nasseem Siman's tackling was "more effective than that of any other man on the team" according to Guilford's student papers, and "about the only aggressive player on the [Guilford] eleven." Otherwise for Guilford, Cook's running was good. As for A&M, "The Jap with the A. & M. team was one of the best men on that side." Unfortunately, further description of the game was not widely reported on; the sole digitized paper from Greensboro was only weekly, and dedicated just a paragraph to the game, and the city of Raleigh was more concerned with the North Carolina-Virginia rivalry game played on that same day (The Greensboro Patriot, December 4th, 1895, p. 3).

The Collegian also wrote that A&M's team had been in "at least" six games prior to the Greensboro game, though I have only found reports of five.