Chadron State College Athletics

Football was a passion for Weller. He loved the game all of his life, and he lived to be nearly 90.
He was born in Illinois and lived in Indiana until his family moved to western Nebraska in the early 1920s when his father helped develop Lake Minatare. The family lived in Minatare, but the high school there did not have a football team, so he attended Scottsbluff High in the fall of 1923 so he could play the sport. That was his only year of high school football.
In the summer of 1924, Weller went to Seattle by train in hopes of playing at the University of Washington. While he practiced with the Huskies and learned to run interference as a pulling guard, he ran out of money and returned home before he had played in a game.  He enrolled at Chadron State in 1925 and started every game at guard the next four years. During an interview in 1991, he said that he and nine of the other 10 starters played the entire 60 minutes in his first college game, the fabled 3-0 victory over Colorado. He earned all-conference honors three times and was the team captain his senior year in 1928.
“I wasn’t particularly fast, but I was quick and knew what to do. Very seldom did I get beat,” he said during the interview.
After graduating in 1929, he took a teaching and coaching job at Riverton, Wyo. He said his annual salary of $1,600 was the highest any first-year teacher from CSC received that year.  While at Riverton, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Wyoming and later served as superintendent at Moorcroft, Manville, Veteran and Yoder in Wyoming.