By Frank Rajkowski, SJU Writer/Video Producer

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - In 1930, the Saint John's University football team suffered what is still the most lopsided defeat in school history when the Johnnies fell 82-0 to St. Olaf College in Northfield.
 
The Oles shared that season's MIAC title with St. Thomas, while SJU – in just its second season under head coach Joe Benda – finished 1-4.
 
But improvement was coming. 

That was evident by the way the Johnnies started the 1931 campaign, going 3-0-1 – including holding three-straight opponents scoreless in Hamline, St. Cloud Teachers College (now St. Cloud State) and Augsburg. That set up a much anticipated rematch with the Oles on Oct. 24, 1931 – 90 years ago this coming week – in Collegeville.
 
Yet while most MIAC observers of the time expected the game to be more competitive, no one seemed to give Benda's team much chance to win.
 
"St. Olaf is not expected to encounter much difficulty with the Johnnies, but may not roll up such a large score as last year," wrote the Minneapolis Tribune in a preview in the Oct. 20, 1931 edition.
 
As it turned out, though, the Oles wouldn't roll up any score at all. 

Instead, led by hard-rushing fullback August 'Gus' Luckemeyer, who scored both his team's touchdowns, SJU pulled off a 13-0 upset that shocked the Minnesota college football world.
 
"The ball rested on the 20-yard line when Umpire Mitchell's whistle announced the end of the game," wrote The Record in Oct. 29 edition recap of the game. "The Johnnies came up from the gridiron hoisted high. Joe Benda likewise came up and his dream had come true. He never could forget that incident last year; he didn't think it was exactly right. Some day in some way he would rectify it. And he and his squad did last Saturday."
 
Luckemeyer scored first on a 9-yard run early in the second quarter, then again on a 3-yard run midway through the fourth. Defensive lineman Al Ethen '34 set up the final touchdown with a fumble recovery at the SJU 30-yard line – capping an impressive outing for the Johnnies' defense.
 
"A powerful line that held the Oles for downs on three different occasions when a score seemed imminent and a running attack the Northfield team could not seem to fathom was responsible for the victory," reported the Tribune the following day.

"This Luckemeyer was a sight for sore eyes – that is, for the Oles," The Record story on the game continued. "He outdid everything he ever did in the business of football. He lugged the oval thirty times for a distance of a hundred and twenty-five yards, averaging one play for four yards every two minutes. He was good for a first down almost every time he was called upon."
 
But it was a headline in the Oct. 26, 1931 edition of the St. Cloud Daily Times that may have summed it up best: 

'Johnny Victory Leaves College Experts in Daze.'

Certainly, the results proved confounding to many in Northfield.

"Astonished by the game's result, the Northfield newspaper called Saint John's four times," wrote current SJU athletic media director Ryan Klinkner '04 in his 2009 thesis paper entitled 'Ordinary Doing the Extraordinary: An Examination of John Gagliardi and the Winning Football Tradition at Saint John's University.'

"Each time asking the score to be repeated."

Indeed, the paper's recap of the game indicated its surprise, while also being sure to recount a number of injuries that left St. Olaf short-handed going into the matchup.

"Practically everyone believes now that St. John's won from St. Olaf 13 to 0 at Collegeville Saturday," the paper reported. "But there was much pooh-poohing and long-distance telephoning before local fans were convinced.

"With two halfbacks, two tackles and an end out of the Ole lineup, the stage was set for a surprise," the story later continued.

But injuries or not, the Johnnies' victory lifted the team into a three-way tie for first place atop the conference standings with Concordia and St. Thomas – a heady place to be for a program that had finished no higher than a tie for fifth since beginning conference play in 1921.

Unfortunately, SJU would not stay there – dropping its final two games of the year 29-0 at Concordia and 14-13 at home to Macalester. But the win over the Oles served notice that Benda's team was now a force to be reckoned with.

"St. John's was clearly no longer a push-over," read the account of the 1931 season in 'Scoreboard: A History of Athletics at Saint John's University.'

"Benda once remarked that up to this time he had always been one of the most sought-out persons at annual meetings at which coaches and athletic directors worked out football schedules… After 1931, Benda's popularity as a choice of opponent waned."

Especially after the following year when the Johnnies finished 6-0-1 and captured the program's first conference title. Both Ethen and Luckemeyer, two of the stars of that 1931 victory, earned All-MIAC honors.

Luckemeyer – also a standout on the basketball court at SJU - went on to serve as an assistant coach for the Johnnies in 1934 before passing away far too soon at the age of 40 in August of 1952.

"Most of his life was devoted to the granite industry and at one time he was a member of the board of directors of the American Monumental Association," read his obituary in the St. Cloud Daily Times.

But in 1931, Luckemeyer and his teammates helped put SJU football on the map.

"St. John's University scored the biggest Minnesota college conference in years," wrote the Tribune in the lead to its game story.

"It may seem like a 'once upon a time' tale, but it isn't," added The Record. "The mighty St. Olaf gridders, co-champs last year with St. Thomas, came to Collegeville last Saturday to play Joe Benda's underdogs in a pushover affair. And, as the sports writers had doped it out, the Johnnies were to fall and fall hard.

"The fact, however, is that the final score of that pushover game read 13-0 in favor of the Johnnies and that's true."

12 years ago (2009) – Then-No. 6 SJU football capitalized on two Cobber fumbles inside the Johnnies' five-yard line to defeat then-No. 23 Concordia-Moorhead, 31-19. SJU head coach John Gagliardi became the first head coach in college football history to coach 600 career games.

39 years ago (1982) – The Johnnie soccer team, and goalkeeper Terry Leiendecker '84, earned a 3-0 shutout of Saint Mary's Oct. 20 in Collegeville. The goose egg on the scoreboard was the Johnnies' ninth consecutive as part of an eventual stretch of 13 straight. Leiendecker, who was inducted into the J-Club Hall of Honor Oct. 9, earned All-America honors that fall as SJU went 10-0-2 (12-2-4 overall) for its fourth MIAC championship.