Reflection

What did you enjoy about this project?

I most enjoyed the interviews. This was hard at first since I had not tracked down the former players easily, but once I talked to one of them I was able to grow my contacts. All four of them were very nice and willing to provide information on anything that I asked. As a matter of fact, Bill Daffin ended up coming to a couple of my games which was a cool opportunity to meet him. 

What surprised you about this project?

I was surprised about the school's access to information. I was expecting more newspaper articles, but the archives in the Library did not have a lot and the online was sort of random with what they had.

 
What was the most challenging aspect of the project, and how did you manage it?

The most challenging part of the project was filtering all of the information that I found. I was fortunate to get so much from the interviews, but had to find similar points and decide what I would use going forward. 

If you could start over, what would you do differently?

If I was to start over, I really do not know what I would do differently. The only thing that comes to mind is making my topic a bit more broad from the start. At first, I was just going to focus on the Mahler brothers, but expanded to the team when I realized that finding information on just the two of them would be tough. 

What did you learn about history and/or the historical process through this project?

I learned that tracking down history information is very tough. I did not have any leads except for the team roster. Therefore, I searched for everyone on Facebook and online. I connected with Bubba Hermes on Facebook and Paul Batista through his internet presence. Then, the two of them gave me Daffin and Mahler's phone numbers and emails.

What did you learn through this project that can be applied to life outside the classroom?

For outside the classroom, I learned from this project that it never hurts to ask people for help. While it did not happen for this project, the worst that can happen is that they say no.