POP ELUCIDATES
Bert got back to light practice the next afternoon but not into the
game with the scrubs. Siedhof and Zanetti were the halves that day,
with Hugh substituting for Zanetti toward the end of the last period.
If the truth must be told, Hugh did not cover himself with glory, for
he fumbled once at a critical moment and lost his team a chance to
score and never made a gain worth recording. But it was perhaps more
due to stage fright than anything else, and Coach Bonner realized the
fact and dealt out no criticism. Oddly enough, it was the released
Hanser who performed the only spectacular feat of a slow and listless
game when he squirmed through the left of the first team’s line, threw
off Siedhof’s tackle and romped straight down the field for twenty-five
or -six yards before Nick stopped him. That incident spelled the end of
Kinley as regular left guard. Yetter succeeded him before the next play
and held the position the balance of the season. Kinley had been a
troublesome problem all the fall and with his retirement the left side
of the line stiffened considerably. Mr. Crowley had his joke with Coach
Bonner on the performances of the exchanged half-backs, but the latter
only smiled and said “Wait.”
There was only signal work on Friday for the first-team members and
most of the school attended the final class game over on the practice
gridiron and saw lower middle triumph over upper middle by the score of
7 to 0.
Lawrence Textile School presented a strong team the next afternoon and
started the proceedings by dropping a kick over Grafton’s goal six
minutes after play began. Grafton put on her strongest line-up, Vail,
whose injury had proved more stubborn than expected, being the only
regular member absent. Bert showed the results of his idleness and was
off his game. Hugh did not get in.
Grafton’s only score came in the second period when two forward passes
took the ball from her forty yards to Textile’s eighteen and Zanetti
gained around the left end and Keyes gathered enough to make it first
down by a plunge on the Textile right guard. From the seven-yard line
the ball went over in three plays, one a delayed pass to full-back, who
got three yards through center, another a skin-tackle play by Bert
that put the pigskin on the two yards, and the third a straight plunge
by Keyes with the whole team behind him. Keyes kicked an easy goal.
But that was the only time Grafton was dangerous. In the last half it
was all Textile, and the visitors secured a touchdown in each period
and kicked a goal each time. The final score was 17 to 7.
The game proved one thing long suspected, which was that the
Scarlet-and-Gray line was far from a perfect machine on defence. Time
and again Textile opened holes wide enough to drive a wagon through.
The power was there and the knowledge, but the fellows didn’t work
together. It was the secondary defence alone that kept the opponent’s
score down to anything like what it was. On the left, Yetter, while
showing up superior to Kinley, was constantly fooled on plays inside
his position. He worked at odds with his center and was, besides,
slow at getting into plays. On his left, Franklin was another weak
defender, although a brilliant tackle on offence. Pop Driver was steady
and dependable, a trifle slow, perhaps, but a hard man to fool. He
and Musgrave, at center, and Ted Trafford at his other shoulder, made
that side of the line fairly impregnable, although Ted, like the other
tackle, was a better offensive than defensive player. The ends had
showed up satisfactorily, with the honors, if any, belonging to Roy
Dresser. As to the back-field, it was hard to judge, since it was a
patched-up affair, with Bert playing only a part of the game and Vail
not getting in at all. Neither Siedhof nor Zanetti were better than
average backs. Nick, at quarter, had played as he always did, hard and
cleverly, handling punts in the back-field faultlessly, running back
well and choosing his plays wisely. Keyes had gained as consistently
as usual with the ball, had been a tower of strength on defence and
had punted excellently. Leddy had proved himself a good substitute
for Keyes. On the whole, there was no fault to be found with the
material. Grafton possessed eleven good players and was well off for
second-string men. The team simply hadn’t developed as it should have.
The Lawrence Textile School game was played just a fortnight before
the date of the Mount Morris contest, and there were those a-plenty
who declared that two weeks was all too short a time in which to bring
the Grafton team to championship form. What Coach Bonner thought, no
one knew, but on Monday it was evident that the first team was in for
strenuous work and that if it was humanly possible to lick it into
shape Mr. Bonner meant to do it. The second team was given the ball at
the start of the scrimmage and told to put it over by line-plays. When
she lost it, as she frequently did, it was promptly handed back to her.
Both coaches were on the field and the playing was often stopped while
they corrected and explained, scolded or commended. The second, driven
to a sort of berserker rage, hammered every position in the opposing
line desperately, Mr. Crowley barking and growling and urging them on.
Hugh got into it in the second ten-minute period and played through
that and most of the third, until a blow on the head turned him so
dizzy that Davy Richards, hovering about the scene like an anxious
mother hen, called him out. He did good work on the defence, too,
considering his lack of weight. He seemed gifted with the faculty of
anticipating the play and getting into it almost before it reached the
line, although it was really less a gift than it appeared. What Hugh
did was to watch the ball, instead of the players, and more than once
Nick’s shouted warning proved wrong and Hugh’s diagnosis correct. He
was pretty roughly used, for the second was in no mood to deal gently
with objects in its way, and frequently he fumed in secret at his lack
of weight.
In the final period――the second had so far failed to cross the
defender’s line――the second was given the ball four times in
succession on the first team’s ten yards and urged to take it over. But
it was not until they had been allowed an extra down, with the ball on
the two yards, that Manson piled through between Musgrave and Yetter
and scored the single tally. It was in that mix-up that Hugh got his
knock-out and Vail went in to finish the game.
Monday’s practice was a fair example of every day’s proceedings until
Thursday. On Thursday the lower middle team, champions of the school,
trotted over and faced the first. They proved an easy prey, and the
first had little difficulty in running up twenty-seven points while the
lower middlers were earning a scant six by the air route. Coach Bonner
tried out two new plays which the first had been learning, and was able
to gain with each several times. The best for all-round purposes was a
split play in which an end shifted to the other side of the line and
played some two yards back. The backs arranged themselves in oblique
tandem, the ball went to full-back, quarter and the back-field end
swung around one wing, the two half-backs around the other and the
full-back plunged straight ahead, usually finding his passage clear. It
was rather a difficult play for the opponent to diagnose, for it had
all the earmarks of a forward-pass to either side of the field. The
lower middlers never did solve it, although that by no means guaranteed
that it would succeed more than once against Mount Morris.
The other new play, although he didn’t know it, was designed to make
use of Hugh’s running ability. It was a tackle-over shift, with the
back-field in square formation and the ball going to right half――in
this case Hugh――on a direct pass. The attack was faked at the long
side, and right half, with left interfering, went around the short
side, the runner turning in sharply when the way was clear. The same
formation was used for a variation in which left half ran wide beyond
the short side and took a forward pass from full-back. The variation
proved less certain of success, however, and was abandoned after a few
subsequent try-outs against the second. But the play in which Hugh
figured was tried four times in that Thursday game and gained each
time. Once Hugh got clean away and covered half the field before he
met his Nemesis in the shape of the opposing quarter, who, in spite of
Hugh’s attempt to elude him, stopped further progress with a neat and
decisive tackle. Another time Hugh gained twelve yards before he was
brought down from behind, again he almost got clear and reeled off the
better part of twenty, and, on the last attempt, with the ball under
the shadow of the enemy’s goal near the eighteen yards, he dodged his
way through at least a half-dozen opponents and scored the first’s
fourth touchdown.
All that sounds as though Hugh played most of the game himself, but it
is needless to say that he didn’t or that his part was only a small
part after all. He held his own well on defence and several times made
short gains on the wings, but lack of weight told against him. One
thing he did not do, however, was fumble. Unfortunately the same cannot
be said of either Bert or Vail. Bert played three periods at left half
and Vail one period at right, going out in favor of Hugh. Vail’s fumble
was not costly, but Bert’s was, for he dropped the ball when tackled
in the line and a lower middler fell on it and three minutes later the
pigskin was floating over the cross-bar for lower middle’s first field
goal. The whole truth is that Bert played poorly that day. His sins
were not only of commission, like that fumble on the twenty-yard line,
but of omission, as when, time after time, he was stopped short in his
tracks before he had penetrated the enemy’s first line of defense.
Siedhof, who replaced him, while not especially effective, at least
gained occasionally through a not very strong line.
Bert was ill-tempered and depressed that evening, and when Hugh,
feeling very happy over his showing, tried to cheer him up, Bert
sneered at him. “You think you know a whole lot, don’t you?” he asked.
“Think you’re a regular fellow now, I guess. You’ve got a whole lot
to learn yet about playing half, let me tell you. When George Vail
gets back you’ll last about ten seconds and then you’ll find yourself
‘chewing the blanket’ again.”
“I dare say,” responded Hugh good-naturedly. “Don’t know just why Mr.
Bonner has been so decent to me, anyway. Of course, I know I can’t play
like you and Vail, old chap. Never thought so for a minute.”
“You act so,” growled Bert. “Coming around and patting my head! I’ll be
playing half when you’re shouting ‘Rah! Rah!’ on the stand.”
“Right-o! Sorry I spoke.”
“You kids,” continued Bert, “have a lucky day and make a couple of runs
and then think you’re the whole shooting match! You make me tired!”
Hugh made no reply, and presently went off down the corridor to
visit Cathcart, who was nowadays voicing regret that the other had
gone over, apparently body and soul, to what Cathcart called “the
muscle-worshippers.” But Cathcart was entertaining three professed
“grinds,” and the conversation soon bored Hugh and he left. On
the way over to Trow he wondered whether football was as Cathcart
predicted, really lessening his interest in what that same youth would
probably have termed, “more vital matters.” Certainly, a month ago the
conversation he had listened to almost in silence would have engrossed
him far more. He confided his doubts to Pop, whom he found quite alone
for once, and Pop replied that he thought it didn’t much matter.
“Of course, a fellow gets his mind pretty well filled with football
about this time of year. It’s natural, Duke. But I don’t see that
it does him any harm. After the Mount Morris game he comes back to
earth, sometimes with a bit of a thump, and has time to think of other
things. Cathcart’s an awful high-brow, anyway. He will have brain fever
some day or go to the funny-house. If I did all the worrying over the
whichness of the what that he does I’d be food for the squirrels.
Forget it.”
Being in an unusually confidential frame of mind this evening, Hugh
told of Bert’s ill-temper, and Pop smiled. “You really mean,” he asked,
“that you don’t know what’s troubling Bert?”
“No, I don’t, really. Should I?”
“Well, you would if you stopped to think a minute. Look here. George
Vail’s not fit to play much yet, and won’t be, I guess, before next
Saturday. Siedhof and Jack Zanetti aren’t first-team caliber yet,
although Billy may be by next year. That leaves Bonner in a hole,
doesn’t it? He knows that he’s got to make up his backs from Bert and
George and, if you keep on coming, you. Well, Vail isn’t in shape yet,
and Bert isn’t doing much either, and there you are.”
“Yes, but――where am I?”
“Why, Bonner is looking to start the Mount Morris game with two of you
three fellows, don’t you savvy? Now the question is, which two? Bert
and George? Bert and you? George and you? He can’t tell yet, and you
can see that he’s doing a lot of thinking. Well, Bert sees that and
he’s thinking too. Just at present you and he are about an even choice.
Vail will probably come around all right and be sure of his position,
but you and Bert will have to fight it out for the other place. That’s
the way it looks to me, Duke. And that, I guess, is what’s worrying
Bert. When the season began he was the only possibility for left half.
Then he got up in the air about something, played like the dickens,
got a busted rib because he was thinking of something else instead of
playing the game, went off on his work――natural enough after a week or
ten days’ lay-off――and now doesn’t seem able to come back. It’s got on
his nerves, I suppose. And he’s taking it out on you. He has a punk
temper, anyway. And then, too, you’ve suddenly sprung up as a rival.
And Bert resents it. Hasn’t any right to, but I guess he does, because
I know Bert pretty well.”
“I wish I’d never gone in for football,” sighed Hugh after a moment’s
silence. “I never thought for a minute, you know, that――that anything
like this would come up. What’s to be done?”
“Done? Nothing’s to be done. Don’t be a chump. Bert will get over his
grouch tomorrow and then you and he will fight it out, just as lots of
other fellows have, and the best man will win. Or, anyway, the one who
promises to be the more useful a week from Saturday will win. It’s up
to Bonner, you know.”
“But I thought that Bert was absolutely certain,” faltered Hugh.
Pop shrugged his big shoulders. “So he was until a while back. He
started off finely. There isn’t a better half-back on a prep school
team today than Bert Winslow when he’s playing right. But he hasn’t
been playing right for nearly a month. Well, three weeks, anyway. What
a fellow has done doesn’t count much. It’s what he’s doing and can do.
Frankly, Duke, if you keep on getting a little better every day, as
you’ve been doing, you’ll play against Mount Morris as sure as I’m a
foot high; perhaps not all through, but half the game, anyway. You
take my advice and quit worrying about things. Just put everything out
of your mind but playing half and try like the dickens!”
“I don’t know that I want to do that, though, if I’m crowding Bert out
and――――”
“Piffle! If you don’t crowd him out Jack Zanetti will, or Billy
Siedhof, unless he gets a move on and fights for his place. Nick and
I were talking about it last night and Nick wanted me to give Bert a
hint. But what’s the use? He knows it as well as I do. He’d only tell
me to mind my own business. Quite right, too. So I’m going to.”
“Then you think I ought to keep on?”
“Of course. What else? We’re here to lick Mount Morris, aren’t we? If
you can help, it’s up to you to do it. Be as sorry for Bert as you
like, but don’t let it interfere with your game, Hugh. It’s up to him.”
The entrance of Roy Dresser put an end to the topic, and presently Hugh
went back to Lothrop. Bert was not there, for which Hugh was glad. He
got ready for bed, found a magazine to read and crawled in. But the
magazine lay face-down on the spread, for the talk with Pop Driver had
provided him with material for much perplexed meditation.