A Comprehensive Narrative History of Tiger Football

     For a number of years I have thought I was going to publish a comprehensive book on Tiger football. All of this was made possible by friend and dedicated historian Gregg Davies who tirelessly copied articles from previous Winn Parish Enterprise archives and mailed them to me. I have a filing cabinet full of virtually every article related to Winnfield Tiger football that has appeared in the Winn Parish Enterprise from 1924 to present. Winnfield Tiger football began in 1909 and accounts of games from 1909 to 1924 appeared in the first newspaper in Winnfield - the News-American. Unfortunately a fire destroyed copies of articles that appeared in that newspaper so much of the history of Winnfield Tiger football between 1909 and 1924 is lost, including scores of games, names of players and coaches and accounts of games. Fortunately there is some information available from that time period, including a summary of the great 1919 team who went undefeated and were declared state champions.
     Once I began writing a summary of Tiger football I wanted each season to stand alone. In other words, I wanted a player or fan interested in one particular season to find enough detail to interest them. That initially ended up being five to ten page accounts of seasons prior to the 1940s and ten to twenty page accounts of seasons past the 1940s. Also, when Winnfield would have a particularly outstanding season I ended up with thirty to forty pages summaries of those season. So, by the time I had written summaries of Winnfield football from 1909 to the mid 1990s I had a thousand pages written. I knew this was too long but I hated to cut out what I thought was important information. Nevertheless, with intentions of putting all of this in book form I began the process of editing what I had written to shorten it. I have edited and edited until I am tired of editing. I cut out approximately 25% of what I had originally written but I still have 750 pages from 1909 to the mid 1990s. Knowing that I still have a decade and a half of football to write about I have decided to "publish" what I have on this web site and forego the idea of putting this in book for. I have wanted former players to read about the early days of Tiger football to see what preceeded them. I have found that a player can put the seasons he played in better perspective when he sees what all has happened on the Tiger football field before and after he played. That has certainly been true for me. Also, I have wanted players and fans to read about particular seasons and remember good times and sometimes heart-breaking times. During this time of editing the book I have been dismayed when one former player after another has died because I sometimes think that they might have liked to read about their playing days again. So, that too is another motivation I have for publishing this book on the web site. I want this information published now......so I will begin populating the web site with the information I have.
     I have summaries of most seasons from 1909 to 1995. I will publish what I have and then as I complete the summaries from 1996 to present I will add those. Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way - there are errors.  Once that is accepted then we can move beyond attempting to have a "perfect" historical account of Winnfield Tiger footall. That is not to imply carelessness or disregard for accuracy. In fact, a pain-staking effort was made to avoid errors, but that has been an exercise in futility - you can’t avoid the unavoidable. Errors in a historical body of work such as this come in the form or errors of omission - names and dates left off, typically because the information was unavailable or incorrectly presented; or errors of commission - incorrect information in the researched material, such as spelling errors or even errors in fact. I have relied almost exclusively on the account of Winn Parish Enterprise reporters on accounts of games. Sometimes sportswriters make mistakes. I have also used accounts of games that have appeared in Alexandria, Shreveport and Monroe newspapers. I have made every effort to "get it right" but I had to decide early-on that if this was ever going to get finished I would have to complete the task I laid out to do with the acceptance that "all" of the information is not here and that the information I am presenting might not be exactly right. So, then, what can you trust? As is true with any good and sound historical document, I would submit that the bulk of this information is historically correct and backed up by verifiable documentation. However, I welcome and even urge readers to offer corrections or fill the gaps in missing information. After all, one of the main purposes of this web site is to preserve the history of Winnfield Tiger football. So, if that is going to be done, I would ask you the reader to add to, question or challenge anything that you see here. I can be reached by email at: edmojenks@aol.com, or, if you prefer to write, you can contact me at: Eddie Jenkins604 Milbank Circle Shreveport, LA  71115 Finally, feel free to contact me by telephone at: 318-820-1080.