Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

Ray Mauro, Gonzaga University football team trainer, was reported to be “somewhere between Colfax and Rosalia,” trudging back to Spokane.

Why? Because he had promised to walk “every step of the 80 miles home from Pullman” if the Gonzaga Bulldogs football team beat the Washington State Cougars in 1935.

Well, the Gonzaga team confounded the experts by upsetting Washington State, 7-0, on a “windswept and frozen field” in front of only 5,000 blanket-wrapped spectators. Temperatures were in the teens.

Gonzaga traveled to Pullman with only 12 players, just one above the absolute minimum. Yet those 12 played error-free football. The winning play was an “elegant pass, traveling more than 20 yards and good for a total of 52 yards” in the fourth quarter.

Mauro nearly wriggled out of his vow, having ridden back to Spokane with the rest of the team. However, “an eagle-eyed committee” of players took him back down to Pullman on Sunday night and told him, “Go north, young man.”

He was scheduled to arrive in Spokane on Tuesday night.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1922: The entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt. … 1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.