Hobart College started playing football in 1891. That was also the third season in which Pudge Heffelfinger, a Minnesotan playing guard for Yale, was named to Walter Camp's All-America team for the third time.
These long ago events in Eastern football intersected Saturday, when the Hobart Statesmen arrived at O'Shaughnessy Stadium to take on St. Thomas in the Division III national quarterfinals.
The visitors handed St. Thomas a pair of touchdowns in the first six minutes and were mostly futile against the rally-to-the-ball Tommies defense throughout the cool, gray afternoon.
The final was 47-7, and the Tommies advanced to the national semifinals for the second year in a row. They are expected to be the host for a Saturday game against Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which rallied to beat Linfield (Ore.).
The defenders assisting in the Tommies' domination included Rutger Heffelfinger, a sophomore from Edina. The aforementioned Pudge was Rutger's great, great uncle. Which means that college football has been in the Heffelfinger family tree for almost 125 years.
Rutger has shared linebacker duty this season with senior Mike Valesano. He had an important tackle for a loss when Saturday's game still was competitive. He also was on the field when Hobart's Steven Webb went 66 yards on a fourth-and-1 in the first quarter.
"Hobart's a running team," Heffelfinger said. "We came into the game determined to stop the run, and we really wanted to stop it on fourth-and-1. I didn't believe he would pop through the line and go all the way."
That was it for Hobart on the scoreboard. Those 66 yards were almost half of the 140 that Hobart managed for the game. The Statesmen added some passing yards late in the game, so the offensive total of 294 yards was inflated.
