“Weitzels excel in every form of track and field work”

I was at loose ends at work on Saturday and was playing around with the Access Newspapers Archive database offered through Badger Link—While access to some Wisconsin papers is frustratingly limited—River Falls for instance only has coverage from 1850-1861,about 100 years too early to do me any good.  Winnipeg has a wealth of fully scanned papers going almost all the way up to the present.  

In doing searches on my Grandparent’s names I discovered that my Grandma Schaefer’s younger sisters,  Elsie and Emma Weitzel were track stars in the late 1930s.  I found 4 stories in 1937 & 1938 reporting the results of various Track meets. 

In a 1937 story In the Winnipeg Evening Tribune Emma even gets her picture in the paper.  

Results from that meet as posted in the Winnipeg Free Press:

The most details about my great aunts was reported in this one from the From Winnipeg Free Press June 2,  1938. I’ve transcribed below for reading ease:

Winnipeg’s representatives at the high school meet in Portage have been decided and although some came as surprises nevertheless they well deserved their victories.  The outstanding performers at the local inter-high meet Thursday and Friday were the Weitzel sisters from St. Johns.  Emma and Elsie each copped a first and second and showed that the Weitzels excel in every form of track and field work.  The A and B class jumps went to these two St Johnions and to demonstrate they could do more than jump, Emma chased Lil Davies home in the B sprint for a place position, and Elsie gave Jean Finch some anxious moments the way she was tossing the ball, but Joan won out in the A class ball throw, with Elsie second.  The easiest winner in the sprints was Lil Davies of Kelvin, who took her race with plenty to spare.  Lil was really running like a veteran, and looks to be a very promising sprinter.  Margaret Orr was also having her innings Friday when she captured the D sprint and then a third in the jump.  The D sprint was rather an upset with Eleanor Sullivan, Manitoba junior sprint champ, not even in the first three.  Whether it was Sullie’s unlucky day or not, Margaret certainly gave her no chance to think about it but went right out all the way.  She earned a well-deserved victory.  The A classer did have to break a record to beat the Kelvin girls.  Elsie Weitzel is the new record holder and a very good one at that.  Evelyn Young and Sheila Coupar of Kelvin both jumped well, but Elsie was just a little better.  Allson Fink, of course came though to win in the B class ball throw, also making a record, but Margret Hughs failed to throw as well as she has and had to be satisfied with second behind Ellie Wail of St. John. Ettie was the only other record breaker.

The style of writing cracks me up.  In other stories they use phrases like “carried off the laurals” to report that someone had won a race. 

Ironically I was going to go back and get the headline for the above story and had plans to look for other things in the index regarding fur companies that my Grandfather worked for, only to discover that Badger-link did not include access to this particular database in their contract and free access was discontinued starting on Monday  the 16^th.  I really hope the city of Milwaukee will get it back at some point,  because I’ve had a lot of fun playing with it.   As it is now, I can search the index, but I can’t look at the actual scanned pages.  I guess just like in the 75 yard dash, timing is everything.