Photo of age 6-8 player during the 89th football season
Celebrating our 90th year of Pride, Tradition & Family
The history of the Arbutus Athletic Association is a record of the astonishing growth of Arbutus, and the spirit of the boys and men who have participated through the years. Back in 1926 when the club was organized, Arbutus was not on the local maps being a few scattered houses surrounded by farms and served by a single trolley that did not run after 1
2 o’clock at night. The idea of the club was first conceived by the youths of 1926 while sitting on the sloping tops of the old bread boxes outside of Blankner’s Grocery Store. They held their first formal meeting in the basement of The Arbutus Methodist Church during the Fall of 1926.
A football team was organized, colors of the blue and white adopted, and games were played on a field which is now Oregon Avenue. In 1926, a new field was laid out in a meadows at the end of North Avenue near the Pennsy Railroad track called Helfrich Oval. Durig the depression years, the field was plowed for corn and the colors of the Triple A wew changed to the present red and gold. In 1937 home games were played on a farm at Benson and Sulphur Spring Road; 1938 through 1941 at Link’s Farm (near the present I-95); 1942-1956 at Slentz’s Field in Irvington and from 1957 to present, the home of the Arbutus Golden Eagles is located at the Arbutus Middle School, located on Shelbourne and Sulphur Spring Road.