DISTAFF SIDE: For all of the women on the sidelines during our
many columns about Bradford High’s great football teams –
especially those of the late 1930s – we have a little treat.

A story in the Feb. 11, 1940, edition of the Philadelphia Record
reports that the year 1939 marked the first appearance of a woman
coach on any gridiron – and it happened in Bradford, of course.

We must pause here to acknowledge we have had this newspaper
clipping quite awhile. Cleaning out old files, we unearthed it –
and is struck a chord with the recent columns about Bradford’s
great teams of the 1930s.

So! Who was this “Pavlova of the Gridiron”?

Let us quote: “Miriam Kreinson, who is petite, dark and pretty,
is assistant coach of one of the best high school elevens in
Pennsylvania, the Bradford Owls – two year record: 20 victories, 2
ties, no defeats. And – perhaps it’s only a coincidence – out
little heroine has been coaching just two years.”

“Bradford knew it was committing the unconventional when it
retained a women to help with the football team but it did not know
just how unorthodox Miss Kreinson really was. Yowls went up – now,
they’re cheers – when she started the backfield candidates off
studying ballet dancing – shades of Heffelfinger – made the
linesmen go in for tap dancing.”

Born in Bradford, she had studied ballet there and in New York
and finally in Europe and had returned to her hometown to open a
dancing school.

Miss Kreinson became interested in football when her brother
Ralph played for Syracuse, the story says.

“She was busy teaching the art of the entrechat and tour jete to
the young hopefuls of Bradford and putting on amateur shows, when
she walked by the high school football field one autumn day two
years ago. A group of players were going through a workout and with
the dancer’s sure instinct for rhythm, Miss Kreinson mentally
checked the movements of the players.

“Some of them were awkward, according to her standards, and when
she got home that night, she tried to figure out why. As a dancing
teacher, she was convinced dancing was the most direct method of
eliminating unsureness of body carriage; thus, it followed that if
the awkward players learned how to dance, they would lose their
clumsiness.”

Tomorrow, the conclusion.