Vanderbilt’s Celebrated 1897 Football Team – James Burney McAlester (standing, fourth from left); J. Boudinot Ream (seated, third from left)]

Vanderbilt’s Celebrated 1897 Football Team – James Burney McAlester (standing, fourth from left); J. Boudinot Ream (seated, third from left)]
Circa 1897, reproduction
Vanderbilt University Special Collections 

Vanderbilt’s undefeated 1897 football team did not give up a single point for the entire season and shared the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association title with the University of Virginia.  James Burney McAlester, a Chickasaw student in the Vanderbilt Law Class of 1898, was the starting left tackle, described by the Vanderbilt Hustler as a “tower of strength.”  In an account of the team’s famous victory over Sewanee, the Nashville American wrote that McAlester, “who could easily make his place on any team in the country,” “stood time and again like solid masonry in the path of the Sewanee advance.”   J. Boudinot Ream, a Chickasaw engineering student who had been the star player for the Wall & Mooney prep school football team, was a reserve on the Vanderbilt squad and played multiple games in the 1897 season. Chickasaw students played other sports as well.  William Thomas Ward took gold in the 100-yard dash at the Spring 1896 SIAA meet, defeating a Sewanee senior the Hustler described as “hitherto invincible.”  “I yet have in my possession my ‘V’ given for a distinctive record on the track,” Ward wrote in 1930.  Ream and George W. Burris played on their class basketball teams.  In the fall of 1897, William Franklin Bourland was elected manager of the junior class baseball team.  In the spring of 1898, McAlester played varsity baseball, leading the team with .412 batting average while, according to the Hustler, “cover[ing] first base as Vanderbilt has never had it covered before.”