10/24/2026
Siler City High School's 1939 football team was undefeated and un-scored on until a fluke play in the last game of the season. Robert Hughes wrote about this special team in the April 1990 issue of the Chatham Historical Journal.
Because of the hardships of the Depression, SCHS had had no football team in the previous three years, despite football's popularity at the time. It was student Dick Huddleston who went before the school board to request that a team be formed.
As Hughs tells the story, "The game was a far cry from its modern version, and it is no small wonder why Huddleston would have instigated the return of the sport to his native Siler City after going through what he described the previous year on a team in Roxboro, 'I hadn't gone out for the team because I was told they didn't have any more suits [uniforms]. But one day I was in the coach's office, and he told me to come out the next day.'"
Huddleston said that what happened that next day almost made him quit the team. "What they did, they used me as a blocking dummy. I would just stand there and they would come full-speed and knock me all over the place. I kept getting up and another one would come back at me. I don't know why I stayed on the team after that, but I did."
Thanks to Huddleston's dedication to the game, football returned to Siler City High School and remarkable season resulted. Has the school ever had a better record?
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