CSU football's first trip to Hawaii was a harrowing 13-day journey

They rode three different trains and spent 10 days on a ship battling a raging storm in the Pacific Ocean that left all but a handful of players “leaning far over the rail” of the S.S. Manoa with serious bouts of seasickness.

One player, fullback Fay Rankin, was hospitalized along the way with diphtheria.

By the time coach Harry Hughes and his 16 players on the football team from Colorado Agricultural College, as CSU was known at the time, arrived in Honolulu on Dec. 11, 1925, they were in no condition to play a game the following day, said John Hirn, author of “Aggies to Rams,” a book chronicling the history of Colorado State University’s football program.

“More than half of the players were still seasick when they took the field,” for the first game ever between CSU and Hawaii, Hirn wrote.

The teams will meet for the 24th time at 10 p.m. Saturday at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu.

“You can hardly imagine that, because we’re thinking like, ‘Dang, it’s going to be long flight, 6-, 7-, maybe an 8-hour trip depending on how long our layover to refuel stop is,” senior quarterback Nick Stevens said Wednesday. “But when you talk about a 10-day boat ride, not even including the trains, that’s crazy.”

Hughes’ Aggies, as CSU’s athletic teams were known at the time, were 9-0 and had already claimed the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title before leaving Fort Collins on Nov. 29 to begin the 13-day journey to the Territory of Hawaii, which wouldn’t become a state for another 34 years. Hundreds of fans turned out, waving banners and cheering the Aggies on as they boarded their train at the Colorado & Southern Depot on what is now LaPorte Avenue, Hirn wrote.

Hughes brought team manager Clark “Sparks” Alford along but left his two assistant coaches and many of his players behind in an effort to save money on a trip that cost the school about $6,000.

The school’s annual athletic budget was about $40,000. Hughes refused to “subsidize athletics” with money that could go to academics, Hirn wrote. Local business owners raised an additional $400 so Hughes’ wife, Minnie Lee, and 11-year-old son, Billy, could make the trip.

The C&S train took the Aggies to Greeley, where they switched to a Union Pacific train bound for Ogden, Utah. There, they switched to a Southern Pacific train to San Francisco, where a hotel bus decorated in CAC’s school colors of pumpkin (orange) and alfalfa (green) picked them up and took them to the Bellevue Hotel (now the Marker Hotel). They were greeted there by a large basket of fresh oranges and a large pennant that read, “From the Aggies of California.” A banquet dinner that night and sightseeing excursion the following day were paid for by the school’s alumni and friends in California.

No CAC team had ever traveled further west than Salt Lake City.

Rain prevented the Aggies from getting in a planned practice Dec. 1 in San Francisco, and the team left for Honolulu the following morning aboard the Matson Line’s S.S. Manoa, a 13,000-ton steamship, 446 feet long, with 30 passenger cabins and a capacity of 90 passengers. Dozens of the California Aggies turned out to send the team off, the ship was flying a giant Aggie pennant and the shipping company released orange and green balloons as the ship left port.

Rough seas were encountered soon after the ship left, and other passengers said they saw many of the “Farmer footballers ‘leaning far over the rail,’ ” Hirn wrote.

Most remained sick throughout the trip and into the game, played on a hot and humid day, with temperature and humidity levels reaching the 90s, said Hirn,a volunteer historian for CSU’s athletic department.

Hawaii,” coached by Otto “Proc” Klum, had beaten the Aggies’ RMAC rival, the University of Colorado, 13-0 in Honolulu at the end of the previous season and came into the game riding a 17-game winning streak. Klum’s “Wonder Teams,” as the 1924-25 squads came to be known, had outscored eight previous opponents in 1925 by a combined 360-6. Seven of those games were against teams from four military bases and three against local club teams on Oahu, while the eighth was at Occidental College in Los Angeles — just the second road game in school history (Hawaii lost a game at Cal Poly-Pomona in 1923).

The Aggies fell behind Hawaii 9-0 after one quarter and lost team captain Hans Wagner to a career-ending knee injury in the second quarter. They lost 41-0 despite a 170-yard rushing effort by quarterback Kenny Hyde, an Estes Park native who was named a third-team All-American on the day of the game. Hyde told his son, John, many years later that he was still feeling the effects of his seasickness during and after the game, Hirn wrote

Seas were calmer for the trip back to San Francisco aboard the Manoa, allowing the Aggies to play cards, shuffleboard and other deck sports along the way, Hirn wrote. With CAC out for winter break, everyone went their separate ways before returning to Fort Collins in January for the spring semester.

It was 39 years before a CSU football team returned to Hawaii. That team, in 1964, made the trip by plane and won 13-6.

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news and listen to him talk CSU sports at 11:35 a.m. Thursdays on KFKA radio (AM 1310).