Henry Goldthwaite "Ditty" Seibels (August 22, 1876 – September 29, 1967) was a prominent American college football and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

player and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

er for the

Sewanee Tigers The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal Church (United States), Episcopal Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 Province 4 of the Epis ...

of Sewanee: The University of the South, a small Episcopal school in the

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

mountain town of Sewanee.

Early years

Seibels was born in Montgomery to Colonel Emmett Seibels and Anne Goldthwaite.

Sewanee

Seibels is best known as the

running back A running back (RB) is a member of the offensive backfield in gridiron football. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback to rush the ball, to line up as a receiver to catch the ball, and block. Ther ...

and captain on the undefeated

1899 Sewanee Tigers football team The 1899 Sewanee Tigers football team represented Sewanee: The University of the South in the 1899 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association football season. Sewanee was one of the first college football powers of the South and the 1899 t ...

. Known as the "Iron Men," they had a six-day road trip with five shutout wins over

Texas A&M Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

;

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

;

Tulane Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

;

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

; and Ole Miss. Recalled memorably with the phrase "..and on the seventh day they rested." The biggest fear of the road trip was injuries, as players who left a game were not allowed to return. In the very first game of that road trip, with Texas, Seibels got a gash on his forehead which was stuck together with "sticking plaster." Seibels scored two touchdowns in that game, and only missed the Tulane game. He scored a Sewanee record 19 touchdowns in 1899. He was nominated though not selected for an ''Associated Press'' All-Time Southeast 1869-1919 era team. A documentary film about the team and Seibels' role was released in 2022, called "Unrivaled: Sewanee 1899." Seibels also captained the baseball team that year; and it too went undefeated. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1973, and is also a member of the Sewanee Athletics Hall of Fame. After college, he was headmaster of Sewanee Grammar School and then moved to

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

and was in the insurance business. Seibels' athleticism was vast, for in 1922 he was the Alabama state

champion. He was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of the South in 1956. Seibels died on September 29, 1967 at age 91 and was the oldest surviving member of the Team of 1899.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Seibels, Henry 1876 births 1967 deaths 19th-century players of American football American football halfbacks Sewanee Tigers football players All-Southern college football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees Players of American football from Montgomery, Alabama Baseball players from Montgomery, Alabama Sewanee Tigers baseball players College men's golfers in the United States Golfers from Alabama