Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Winter 2015 | Page 14

Photos from the ANC Archives, and the Hockey Hall of Fame, Toronto, ON

Werner Schnarr as captain for the Bryn Athyn team in 1921 (left),
and with the 1924-1925 Boston Bruins NHL team (right).

last year’s national tournament.
The hockey program we have at the College and
Secondary Schools is now in its 56th year, and the
2015-16 season marks the 49th season that we have
had a team that represents the College. The sport is
flourishing at the institution and in the community.
But – and it may come as a surprise – hockey at Bryn
Athyn actually goes back far earlier than 1960. It was
played here in the early 1900s when College athletes
participated on our Secondary School teams. The
first game appears to have been played some 115
years ago in February 1901. One of the best athletics
teams in our institutions’ history was the ice hockey
team of 1921. The captain of the 1921 team, Werner
Schnarr, is one of the most successful athletes to
have ever attended Bryn Athyn. He later became a
professional hockey player and was a member of
the original Boston Bruins team that played in the
NHL. Werner Schnarr is the only alumnus of the
Boys’ School and Bryn Athyn College that has played
professional hockey in the NHL.
The early athletics teams at Bryn Athyn were
often composed of players from the different schools
of the Academy. The football team of 1920 is a good
example as its roster included players from the Boys’
School, College, and Theological School, and its
captain was college student Daric Acton. The 1921
hockey team featured twelve players, ten from the
Boys’ School and two from the College. The team
included Daric Acton, Oliver Burnham, Harris
Campbell, Theodore Doering, Winfred Farrington,
John Fuller, Clarence Schnarr, Rudolph “Rud”
Schnarr, Werner Schnarr, George Scott, Sterling
Smith, and Richard Waelchli. Thomas Shriver and

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Willard D. Pendleton were team managers and the
team coaching staff appears to have been Frederick
Finkeldey, Charles R. Pendleton and Donald F. Rose.
Practice took place on the flooded tennis courts
on campus that used to be located between Glenn
Hall and Buck Road, and at the new indoor ice rink,
the Ice Palace in Philadelphia. The team competed
in the first ever High School Hockey League in the
Philadelphia area. One newspaper wrote before the
league started,
With Werner Schnarr playing center and directing
the play, and with three [actually four] other former
Canadian players in the line-up, Bryn Athyn has the
strongest team in the league. It will take a lot of class on
the part of the other teams to stop the academy lads, for
Schnarr alone is almost a team.

The season also included games against
University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University,
and it concluded with two games to decide the
scholastic Pennsylvania State Champions. All the
games were played at the Ice Palace, and remarkably
drew a sizeable crowd from the Bryn Athyn
community that made the trek to the Ice Palace to
watch the games. Furthermore, the team’s success
attracted considerable media attention from the
Philadelphia newspapers.
The team played its first two games without
Werner Schnarr. On February 4, 1921, West
Philadelphia was defeated by 5 goals to 1, after a
natural hat trick by Rud Schnarr. A week later, the
team returned to the Ice Palace where it overpowered
Norristown 8-3. Oliver Burnham scored 4 goals in
this game.
Werner Schnarr was back with the Bryn Athyn
team for the third league game against Norristown
on March 1. With him in the line-up, Norristown
had absolutely no chance. The game ended 24-0 in
Bryn Athyn’s favor – a score that might be the biggest
winning margin ever by a Bryn Athyn hockey team.
Moreover, Werner Schnarr scored 15 goals in this
game - a quintuple hat trick, which is a feat that
might also be an all-time record in the history of
Bryn Athyn hockey.
Bryn Athyn played its second game against West
Philadelphia on March 8 and won a hard fought
game. West Philadelphia had a very good goalkeeper,
Leroy Hauser, whose excellent work in the net
saved West Philadelphia from a bigger defeat. The
Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
[T]he battle of sticks between him [Schnarr] and Hauser
was one of the most exciting exhibitions ever seen in
an ice hockey game. Time after time Schnarr carried
the puck like a shot down the ice towards the West