In February, John Prutsman ’57 donated his 1956 Northwest Conference Championship football jacket to the university archives. The gift is part of a project to commemorate “The Streak” — Linfield’s 64 consecutive winning football seasons.
“I was not a good athlete,” Prutsman deadpanned about his early days as a Wildcat in an oral history interview with archivist Rich Schmidt. “I had very little experience and I started out as an end. Then I found out you were supposed to catch a ball — so that screwed things up for me a little bit.” Things improved when he switched to playing tackle, he said.
More seriously, Prutsman added, “I got the best classroom in the world out there on the football field, because it takes cooperation, it takes energy, it takes all these things that you need in life.”
