Lt. Zeus Soucek, starred with the Keystoners before transferring over and coaching the USS Maryland team.

The Pennsylvania dominated the 1935 season on it's way to Fleet Champions.

Scenes from the 1935 Championship Season won in Bremerton, Washington over the Arizona

Following the 1936 season, Col "Swede" Larson was stationed in Shanghai where he coached the 1937 6th Marines.  Larson's decorated career included being a captain of the 1921 Naval Academy team and second-team center on the Walter Camp All-American team, and All-American on the lacrosse team that defeated Army, and from 1922-1924 played with the Quantico All-Marine team.  He was named coach of the Parris Island Marines for 1925-1926, and the All-Navy squad in Hawai'i for the 1927 season.  1928 he coached the 2nd Marine Brigade of the Puget Sound Naval Ammunition Depot before spending two years in Nicaragua, returning to Parris Island in 1931.  Prior to his appointment to the USS Pennsylvania, Swede was stationed aboard the USS Minneapolis.  He would succeed his former rival from the USS Arizona, Hank Hardwick as the 23rd head coach of the Naval Academy from 1939 to 1941 compiling a 16-8-3 record.  While on a speaking engagement in Atlanta, Georgia, the 47-year old died of a heart attack Nov 7, 1945.

The “Pennsylvania” was the flagship of the fleet and was tied up at the main dock in Pearl Harbor of Dec 7, 1941.
 
The 1941 Fleet Championship was slated for 1 PM...but world history changed that as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in the early morning hours.
 
The ship was torpedoed in Buckner Bay and after patching the hole limped into Puget Sound Navy Yard on Oct 24, 1945.
 
The following is an excerpt from "Pearl Harbor: A Crow's Nest Vantage Point"
 
Dressed in his football pads and uniform, Michael “Mickey” Ganitch was ready to play one of the many football games he and other sailors from his ship, the USS Pennsylvania, participated in regularly. They had a winning record, having only lost one game. The date was December 7, 1941, and they were scheduled to leave the ship at 08:00 am to play the 13:00 (1pm) game with the team from the USS Arizona for the Fleet Football Championship. No one could have imagined what happened next.

Mickey Ganitch, Mogadore School Class of 1937, All-County Football team stood out (at only 172 pounds), left Ohio in 1939 after working for the WPA. He went to California looking for work but found scarce work there too. So he did as many other men did; he joined the Navy. It was January 1941. He had no idea what trade he would like to pursue in the Navy; after all, he was a small town boy from Ohio, raised on a farm. So the Navy tested him. He had always been a good student and placed high on the Navy tests. An instructor asked him how he would like to steer a big ship under the Golden Gate Bridge. The largest boat Mickey had ever seen was a ferry boat, so this sounded exciting to him.
 
The football game was never played. Later, Mickey learned when he came home to Ohio on leave in 1942, one of his neighbors (who went to a different school) was on the Arizona and is still on it. If the game had been played, they would have played against each other as they played the same position and had done so in high school football games.

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