The "Orrville Captains Project"...complete.

A mere week after putting out the call for help in compiling a historical list of Orrville football captains, the project is now complete...due in large part to many contributions from Orrville alums, former players, and even the Orrviews newspaper.

I'll explain....but only after I show you the list.  The link will be at the top of the page (under the banner) for awhile and also listed in the "Football" menu bar permanently.

Picture: 1993 captains (L to R): Shelton Riffle, Doug Steiner, Mark Hershey)

Thanks to a friend, I was able to get my hands on a media guide from the 1983 football season (I'll have a full post on this later).  The guide listed season by season results, coaches and captains from 1903 on.  What I was missing was everything after the '83 season.  That's where so many awesome Rider fans chipped in and helped me get this done.

Even with all that help, I was still needing captains from the 2001 football season.  I knew nobody from that class (the Class of 2002) so I was really stuck.  Several of my contacts had thoughts of who might have been captains, but no one knew for sure.

I didn't want to hold up the entire list for one class, and was all set to post it as incomplete...but then I read in Orrviews that the entire Orrviews archive was now online for anyone to read.  Hope abounded.

Orrviews began in 2001...so I thought I'd check it out....excited that the 2001 captains may be a few keystrokes away.  But the first Orrviews issue was not printed until December 2001, a month after football season had ended....I was immediately less excited.

But that's when I happened upon the sports page from that beautiful first issue....click here and read the 5th paragraph under the "Football" heading.  JACK...POT!!!  I had my captains from the 2001 season and my project was officially complete.

It's wonderful to now be able to read old Orrviews articles since their inception in 2001...and the fact that this resource helped me complete a historically worthwhile project was the icing on the cake, to me at least.  Great work by the Orrviews staff and steering committee for providing this service to the community.  Here's the link to the homepage for the archive search.

To those that took their own time and contacted me; offering help, information and encouragement.....thank you so much.  You all know who you are, and your fingerprints are on this list.  This is why the blog exists...to come together as Rider fans to provide a digital record of as much Red Rider history as possible.

Enjoy looking at the list.  I had fun looking at names I knew, old classmates, great players from past eras, and even family members.  If you think a name should be on the list, but isn't...please contact me.