Kip Taylor Recalls His Scholastic Days

Kip Taylor Recalls His Scholastic Days

By Mill Maish.

LeVerne "Kip" Taylor, Arbor’s pride and joy and now head football coach at Oregon State College, was right back where he started from yesterday afternoon when we caught him conversing with Louis H. Hollway, in the gym at Ann Arbor High school.

It was at Ann Arbor High that Taylor started on his athletic career. He starred for three years in football and basketball at Ann Arbor and only a spine injury prevented him from gaining All-American recognition at Michigan where he gained fame by scoring the first Michigan touchdown ever made in the new stadium.

Kip was back in town yesterday to visit his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Taylor, 929 W. Liberty St., while en route back to the west coast after attending the football coaches meetings in New York.

“Its great to be home,” Taylor grinned as he was kept busy shaking hands with his many worshippers in his old home town.

Was Best Team

In the above picture which hangs in Hollway's office, Hollway is shown pointing to a picture on the wall. It was the Ann Arbor High basketball team of 1926 of which Taylor was the star center and Hollway the coach. As Taylor points out, that team holds the all-time basketball record at Ann Arbor High, winning 13 games and losing only to Detroit Northwestern, 21-18, in the semi-finals of the state tournament at Waterman gymnasium.

Shown in the wall picture (upper right) the players of that team are as follows: Top-row—Cy Korzuck, Red Litchfield, Frank Forsythe and Coach Hollway. Middle row—Zit Tessmer, John Kagay, Taylor, Harvey Wrathell and Jack Anderson. Front row—Ray Wines and Bertram Cushing.

Pete Hanna, later an All-American basketball player at Western Michigan, was also a member of that team for the first semester, when he concluded his competition.

Likes It On Coast

Taylor “loves to live on the West coast, but Ann Arbor will always be my home.”

He reports that the Elliott brothers, Pete and Bump, former Wolverine stars, did an excellent job for him as assistant coaches the past season.

Taylor’s team had a most successful season, winning seven out of 10 games. The 25 to 20 victory over Michigan State, where he formerly served as assistant coach, was the sweetest triumph of the season, although the 20-10 victory over Oregon University in the finale was also highly cherished.

“That game with Oregon is like the Michigan-Michigan State game here,” says Taylor. “It is a meeting of deadly rivals. Well, as you know we met Oregon the week after we beat Michigan State.

“After that victory over Michigan State, my boys were up in the clouds. They had been reading their press clippings and here was I with the traditional Oregon game coming up Saturday.

“I never saw a team so miserable as our team in the Tuesday practice. They fumbled, forgot signals and couldn’t execute even the simplest of our plays. I was discouraged.”

But here Taylor relates how he fell back on Old Man Psychology in getting his team up for Oregon.

“On Wednesday we practiced only 20 minutes. The same on Thursday,” Taylor continues. “By Friday I had several of the boys come to me and complain that we hadn’t really practiced all week. Right then I knew we would be up for the game.”

And that right there explains why Kip Taylor is a great coach. He knows how to handle kids.

BACK WHERE HE STARTED: LeVerne “Kip” Taylor (left), now head football coach at Oregon State College, returned to the scene of his former triumphs yesterday as he visited Louis H. Hollway, physical education director, in his office at the Ann Arbor high school. Hollway is pointing to a basketball picture taken in 1926 three years after Hollway came here to coach. Taylor was a member of that team which holds the all-time Pioneer record of winning 13 games and losing only to Detroit Northwestern in the semi-finals of the state tournament.