Ben Polak was the youngest man to be named captain of a college Division One football team in the United States.  After graduation from Providence College, Ben played in the College All Star game against the Chicago Bears.                   

He was a fifteen-year-old senior who played every minute of the season for Warren High School’s 1933 Class B Football Champions.  (A number of his teammates also played the entire season.)  He ran back an intercepted pass forty yards and then scored from seven yards out in the 6-0 title game defeat of Central Falls.

In his senior year he received Class B honors in both basketball and track (shot put).

A fullback for the Warren Townies and Wanderers, Ben caught a touchdown pass in a defeat of the Barrington Townies and coached the Wanderers to the 1937 State One Hundred and Thirty-Five Pound Championship.

At the end of his junior football season at Providence College Ben was named the captain of the 1937 Friars eleven.  He was only eighteen-years-old at the time and thus became the youngest captain in major college football history.  In that season Ben’s charges just missed knocking off national powerhouse Holy Cross. 

As the Providence Journal  opined, “the outcome was practically a moral victory.”

After playing in the 1938 College All Star Football Game versus the Chicago Bears, Ben starred for the Providence Steam Roller in the American Football Association of 1939 and 1940.  (The American Association was one level below the National Football League.)  He was a member of the Narries team that won the Warren Fast-Pitch Softball League 1940 title.

Picture from Hall of Fame archives