Chris Foran

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

They were known for a time as the Golden Avalanche, but by the late 1950s, Marquette University's football team wasn't exactly running over a lot of teams.

In fact, the football team then known as the Warriors had lost 20 games in a row, ending the streak with a win to start the 1958 season. The rest of that year, the team went 1-7-1 — and the 1959 season didn't go much better.

But after starting 1959 with seven straight losses, Marquette won two straight, including a 35-34 win over Cincinnati.

The season's final game — Nov. 21, 1959, against Holy Cross at Marquette Stadium, then at N. 36th St. and Clybourn Ave. — was the capper to what looked like the start of a turnaround for Marquette football.

In his game story published Nov. 22, 1959, Milwaukee Journal sportswriter Dick Tharinger described a team that sounded like it was on a roll, as Marquette "simply crushed" the Holy Cross Crusaders, 30-12, before a crowd of 12,137.

The three-game winning streak was Marquette's longest since 1953.

"From the way the Warriors have been rolling in recent weeks, it was a shame that the season ended," Tharinger wrote.

For a team that had suffered through a lot of defeats, there were plenty of kudos to go around.

"(Quarterback) Pete Hall cut the Holy Cross pass defense to ribbons with his passes; Jim Webster, Frank Mestnik and Frank Reginelli blasted through the Holy Cross line, and the Warrior defense never let the Crusaders get out of hot water," Tharinger wrote.

Hall completed 18 passes (out of 26) for 143 yards, setting a school single-season record and, at 1,589 yards, second-most in the country behind Stanford's Dick Norman and ahead of such future NFL stars as Charley Johnson, Norm Snead and Don Meredith. (Milwaukee Sentinel sportswriter Rel Bochat, in his coverage of the game in the Nov. 22 Sentinel, called Hall "Passer Pete.")

Marquette's dominant performance was cause for hope that the school's football fortunes had finally brightened, Bochat wrote: "Marquette is apparently back in the football business. … Things are looking up, and Warrior fans may not have to depend on basketball for all their celebrations."

Tharinger noted that Marquette fans, scarce in recent years, were swept up in the moment when the game ended.

"Marquette students had been waiting for several minutes beyond the north goal line," he wrote. "They had that goalpost torn down inside of 30 seconds, then started for the south goal. That produced one of the finest defensive plays of the day.

"One Jesuit priest faced the advancing horde and stopped the students in their tracks."

Judging from the Journal and Sentinel coverage, the consensus was that Marquette's football program had turned a corner under coach Lisle Blackbourn, who had been Marquette's head coach from 1950-'53 before bolting for the head-coaching job with the Green Bay Packers.

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The Packers dismissed Blackbourn after the 1957 season; in his four seasons at the helm, the Green and Gold went 17-31. After one year coaching Carroll College's team, he returned to Marquette.

Winning the 1959 season finale, Blackbourn told Tharinger, was key.

"For my money, this is the big one," Blackbourn said in a story in The Journal's Nov. 23, 1959, edition. "It was almost worth the bad season we had. Now we've got something to start on next year.

"The kids wanted this one, and they whaled the tar out of them. Spirit was the main thing. You just can't win without it, and I think we've got it now."

It looked like it, too, at least for a little while. Marquette started the 1960 season with three victories in its first four games. But the team then reverted to form, losing its final five contests, each by more than two touchdowns.

The 1960 season turned out to be the last for Marquette University football. The school announced on Dec. 9, 1960, that it was dropping its football program in a cost-cutting move.

A few of the players from the 1959 team went on to pro careers. Hall played sparingly for one season with the New York Giants. Mestnik played fullback for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Packers. George Andrie, who played end and defensive end, went on to play 11 seasons in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys.

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

Each Wednesday, Our Back Pages dips into the Journal Sentinel archives, sharing photos and stories from the past that connect, reflect and sometimes contradict the Milwaukee we know today.

Special thanks and kudos go to senior multimedia designer Bill Schulz for finding many of the gems in the Journal Sentinel photo archives.