IN THE COACH’S ROOM
Whether the comedy was good or not, it at least evoked much laughter,
and was followed by a thrilling “big picture” that worked Willard to
a pitch of excitement that lasted until he was out on State Street
again. They ran into Mr. Cade in front of the theater and he fell into
step with them as they walked back toward the Green. He and Joe and
Bob talked about the show, while Martin and Willard followed behind
and listened. At West Street Bob proposed drinks, and they crossed to
The Mirror and sat about a tiny table and drank colorful concoctions
through paper straws. The coach rather surprised Willard by displaying
positive enthusiasm for his tipple, which, as near as Willard could
determine, contained a little of everything that could come out of the
glistening taps! Willard was a little bit too much in awe of the coach
to feel quite at ease, and his contributions to the conversation were
few and brief. Not that the talk was very erudite, however, for Bob
talked a good deal of nonsense and Mr. Cade certainly didn’t oppress
them with a flow of wisdom. On the contrary, he laughed at Bob a good
deal and said one or two funny things himself, things at which Willard
laughed a bit constrainedly, not being certain that it was right to
greet anything a head football coach said with levity. At Schuyler High
School the coach had been a most dignified and unapproachable martinet
of whom everyone stood in admiring awe!
When they went out Bob leaned carelessly across the counter and
instructed the young lady with the enormous puffs over her ears to “put
that down to me, please.” Willard, following the others out, reflected
that, while trading on a cash basis might be wiser, one missed many
fine moments by not having a charge account! (This, perhaps, is a
good place to explain that the expression “fine moments” was widely
current at Alton that term. Like many other expressions, its origin was
a mystery, and, like them, its vogue grew by leaps and bounds until
even the freshmen were having their “fine moments” and Mr. Fowler, in
English 7, prohibited its use in themes.)
Near the end of State Street, with the lights on the Green gleaming
through the trees ahead, Mr. Cade proposed that the boys pay him a
visit, and Willard found himself turning in at a little white gate.
The old green-shuttered Colonial mansion on the corner was one of
several houses standing across from the Green that had at one time or
another, sometimes as a gift, sometimes by purchase, become Academy
property. This particular mansion was occupied by three of the married
faculty members and, in turn, by the football and baseball coaches.
Mr. Cade’s apartment was on the lower floor, at the right, two huge,
high-ceilinged rooms separated by what had once been a pantry but was
now a dressing and bathroom. The furnishings were comfortable but
plain, and in the front room a generous grate eked out the efforts of
a discouraged furnace. Tonight, however, the sight of the fireplace
brought no pleasurable thrill. Instead, it was the four big, wide-open
windows that attracted the visitors. Those in front opened on a
narrow veranda set with tall white pillars, those on the side shed
the light of the room onto a maze of shrubbery and trees beyond which
the illumined windows of the dormitories twinkled. There was a big
table in the center of the living-room littered with books and writing
materials, smoking paraphernalia, gloves, a riding crop, a camera, a
blue sweater and many other things, a fine and interesting hodgepodge
that Willard, pausing beside it, viewed curiously. The object that
engaged his closest attention, though, was a board about thirty inches
square. It was covered with green felt on which at intervals of an inch
white lines crossed. On the margins were figures: “5,” “10,” “15,” and
so on up to “50.” Stuck at random into the board were queer little
colored thumb-tacks, twenty-two in all. Half of them were gray and half
of them were red, and each held letters: “L. H.,” “R. G.,” “L. E.,” and
so on. Willard was still studying the board, its purpose slowly dawning
on him, when Mr. Cade spoke.
“Looking at my ‘parlor gridiron,’ Harmon?” he asked. “Nice little
plaything, isn’t it?” He came to Willard’s side and lifted the board
from the table. “I made it myself, and I’m sort of proud of it, for
I’m all thumbs when it comes to doing anything with my hands. Each
of the inch lines represents five yards, do you see? And I use these
thumb-tacks for the players. It’s rather a help when it comes to
studying out a play; although I acknowledge that I can get on faster
with the back of an envelope and a pencil stub!”
“I think it’s awfully clever,” said Willard admiringly. “It’s just half
a field, though, isn’t it, sir?”
“That’s all; from the goal-line to the fifty-yard-line. That’s all
that’s needed, you see. Want to play with it?” The coach laughed and
wheeled a deep-seated rep-covered armchair to the table. “Sit down and
be comfortable,” he added. Willard subsided embarrassedly into the
chair, still holding the miniature gridiron. Joe and Bob were seated
by one of the side windows--what breeze there was came from the west
this evening--and Martin and the coach shared an old-fashioned sofa
nearby. Willard, listening to the talk, began to set the thumb-tacks in
place along the thirty-yard-line. Presently he had become so interested
in arranging a forward-pass defense for the gray tacks that he had
forgotten all about the others. He wasn’t quite certain that the Gray’s
ends should play all the way up into the line, and he set them back
half the distance to the next white mark. Then he concluded that the
pass would be made by that suspicious-looking red tack labeled “L. H.”
and that it would go to one of the red ends. Consequently, he advanced
the gray ends up to the line once more, but a trifle further out, so
that they might cut in quickly and spoil the throw. After that he
pulled the Gray’s quarter-back in another yard or two, chancing that
the ball would not go more than fifteen yards. Then there was nothing
to do but wait for the play, and, since it didn’t materialize, he set
the board back on the table and gave his attention again to the others.
“Two years ago,” Mr. Cade was saying, “there were five of us in here
for almost a week: Levington and Sproule and Jack Tanner-- Who was the
chap helped coach the tackles that year, Myers? Do you remember? Tall
fellow who wore spectacles and--”
“Clarke, sir? No, I know! Salters!”
“That’s right! Salters! He was a good hand and I’d like to get him back
again this fall. Well, there were five of us, I remember, and we were
bunked all over the place; three of us in the bedroom and two of us in
here. We had rather a good time, but no one got much sleep. I remember
the night before the Kenly game we sat up until nearly three o’clock.
Our left tackle, Gadsden, had sprained his ankle that day; someone
pushed him coming out of Academy; and we had to make over the whole
plan of battle. Gadsden, you’ll remember, was our long punter and we’d
mapped out a kicking game. To make things worse, it began to rain and
sleet that evening, and we’d looked for a dry field. We certainly had
our hands full that night. It was Levington who suggested pulling the
guards out and using them on end runs, and we won on those plays. You
see our backfield was pretty light and the wet field slowed them up.
You played awhile in that game, didn’t you, Myers, toward the end?”
“Yes, for three or four minutes. I was in when we made our second
score. We dumped their end and Morgan shot around for four yards and
the touchdown.”
“That’s right. It looked like a tie game until near the end. Kenly had
a man who could boot a wet ball forty yards every time and we had no
one to meet him with. But we certainly wore her ends to a frazzle. She
used three pairs before she got through! It was nothing but fight and
determination that won that game, fellows. On paper we figured about
seventy per cent to their one hundred before the start. They had us
licked, but they didn’t know it, and we never told them!”
“What about this year, sir?” asked Martin.
“How many snowstorms are we going to have in January?” asked the coach
laughingly. “It’s rather too early for predictions, Proctor. But for
all I can see now we’ve got a better show than we had two years ago,
and we licked her then. We’re certainly going to be in better shape
than last year.”
“We’ve got to find a full-back,” said Joe dubiously.
“Yes, and a new tackle and maybe an end. But we’ll do it. There’s a lot
of good material to pick from this year.”
“I suppose you’ve heard, sir, that Kenly’s got that fellow Timmons who
played left end on Millwood High last season,” said Bob.
“No, is that so? Is he good?”
“They say so. Funny thing we don’t seem to catch any of the stars, Mr.
Cade.”
“We don’t want them, Newhall. Stars are uncertain things. They have
a mean way of going out unexpectedly! I’d rather have a bunch of
satellites to work with and turn out my own stars!”
The others laughed, but Bob shook his head, not altogether convinced.
“That’s all right, sir, but you’d think we’d get more good players
here. It isn’t as if Alton was a small school or a punk one. Of course
those fellows with big reputations don’t always pan out when you get
them, but, just the same, I’d like to see some of them head this way
now and then!”
“I dare say it wouldn’t hurt,” agreed the coach. “But, fellows, the
longer I stick at this coaching game the more convinced I am that
when it comes to the last analysis it isn’t plays or players that
win games; it’s _spirit_! Take eleven corking men, each one a master
of his position, and get them so that they play together like a
well-oiled machine, and then run them up against a team of ordinary
players without much team-work or anything else except a great, big,
overwhelming desire to win, and what happens three times out of four?
Why, that inferior team wins! She may make mistakes, she may play
ragged ball, but grim determination and fight and _spirit_ get her
there! You see it happen all the time. I can tell you of twenty games
where the best team was beaten just because, while she wanted to win,
she didn’t want to win _hard_ enough!”
“Yes, sir, I guess that’s so,” agreed Joe. “And I guess it’s a lot
easier to teach a team to play good football than it is to put the
right spirit in them.”
“Of course it is! You’ve got to begin with the School, Myers, and work
down to the team. If the School hasn’t got the right spirit, the team
won’t have it. And that’s why I try to get as many fellows out for
football at the beginning of the year as I can. Or, at least, it’s one
reason. Interest a fellow, no matter how little, in the team, and
he’ll believe in it and work for it. Even if a fellow comes out only
to be dropped three or four days later, he’s ‘smelled leather’ and he
never quite forgets it. He thinks well of his more successful companion
who has made good, even though he may be secretly envious of him, and
the team and its success means a lot more to him than it does to the
chap who has never had anything to do with it. The team that feels the
School behind it works hard and loyally and, when the big test comes,
fights like the very dickens! And it’s fight that wins football games,
just as it’s fight that wins battles. And that’s that!”
Mr. Cade ended with a little laugh that seemed to apologize for his
vehemence, but none of his listeners joined in it. After a moment
Martin said: “There’s a little school they call Upton Academy near my
home, Mr. Cade. It has only about a hundred and twenty students, I
suppose, and more than half of ’em are girls. But they meet teams from
bigger schools and beat them right along. One of the teachers coaches
them and the girls go with them and cheer like mad and they wipe up the
whole county!”
“I guess it’s spirit in that case,” said the coach. “And maybe the
girls have a lot to do with it. Ever notice what a deal of fighting
spirit girls show? First thing we know--or our children know--the
girls will be playing real football. And when they do, fellows, look
out!” Mr. Cade chuckled at his direful prediction.
A little later the boys arose to go and Mr. Cade, moving to the table,
took up the felt-covered board and looked at it curiously. “Defense
for forward-pass, eh, Harmon?” he said. “Which of these red fellows is
making the toss?”
“I don’t know, sir,” answered Willard. “I was playing the Gray’s end of
it. But I figured that left half-back was throwing to an end.”
The others gathered around to see and Mr. Cade looked speculatively at
Willard for a moment before he smiled and laid the board back on the
table. “I’d pull my ends in further in that case,” he said, “and bring
them nearer the play. What position are you after?”
“Half-back, sir.”
“I see. Well, it’s an interesting job, half-back’s. Lots of chance for
initiative there. Quick thinking, too. Well, good night, fellows. Drop
in again some evening. I’m generally home.”