The 1913 Holy Cross football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team that represented the College of the Holy Cross in the

1913 college football season The 1913 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the ''Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book'' listing Auburn, Chicago, and Harvard as having been selected national champions. All three teams finished with undefeated re ...

. In its first and only year under head coach Harry von Kersburg, the team compiled a 3–6 record. Wilfred Metivier was the team captain. The season began with a tragedy, as Vernon S. Belyea, a junior halfback at Norwich University, was paralyzed while running back a Holy Cross punt at Fitton Field, and later died. Belyea suffered a fractured sixth

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

after being tackled by Holy Cross' captain, Metivier. Belyea was taken to

Saint Vincent Hospital Saint Vincent Hospital is a 381-bed hospital located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded by the Catholic Sisters of Providence of Holyoke in 1893, Saint Vincent's was named after the patron saint of the Sisters' order, Saint Vincent de Paul ...

in Worcester, where he died the following day. Holy Cross played its home games at

Fitton Field Fitton Field is a football stadium in Worcester, Massachusetts primarily used for College of the Holy Cross sporting events. The stadium opened in 1908 as the official home for the Holy Cross Crusaders football team. Before that, most games were ...

on the college campus in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

Schedule

References

{{Holy Cross Crusaders football navbox Holy Cross Holy Cross Crusaders football seasons Holy Cross football