Old football players, veterans of school and college struggles, looked down admiringly on the finely-polished team-work of the Jefferson eleven and said to themselves that this was good football judged by any standard.
A few minutes after the kick-off following the second score of the Jefferson team, the quarter came to an end and the teams exchanged goals. In the short rest period Neil Durant gathered his players about him and said a few things that every member of the eleven long remembered.
"Is there any one here," he asked, "who hasn't more fight in him than he has shown yet?"
No answer.
"We've just begun this game and we haven't had our chance to show them what we can do when we carry the ball. We're going to hold them first and then we're going to show them something they've never learned."
They were commonplace words, but they came from the bottom of Neil Durant's heart and were delivered in such a manner that every member of the team gained fresh confidence and put back out of the realm of his thoughts the growing fear of defeat.
The ball was in Jefferson's possession at the middle of the field. On the very next play the purple left-half fumbled, and Neil Durant swooped down on the bouncing ball like a hawk on a sparrow.
The error seemed to "rattle" the Jefferson team. Dean called for an end run by Neil Durant and the captain responded by dashing forward for a fifteen-yard gain. Stillson then added five, and Teeny-bits, who was called upon to carry the ball for the first time, wriggled and dodged through the Jefferson team to the fifteen-yard line before he was stopped. In an attempt to surprise the enemy, Dean called upon Teeny-bits again, but this time the half-back was stopped almost before he was under way. Stillson, who carried the ball next, did better and reached the ten-yard line. Neil Durant then made a line plunge through an opening that the reliable Tom Curwood created and planted the oval five yards from the goal line for a first down. Jefferson made a strong stand, but in four tries the Ridgley team advanced the ball until it rested a few inches over that last white line, the crossing of which spelled a score.
The old-timers in the stands now settled into comfortable positions and said to each other: "This is a game!"
Neil Durant's trusty toe sent the ball between the uprights and the game stood 14 to 7. Through the rest of the second quarter the red team and the purple team combated each other on equal terms. Neither seemed able to break the defense of the other and when the whistle sounded for the close of the first half they were fighting on equal terms in the center of the field.