Finished with the list, he and Mr. Rice went into conference over it for a few minutes, then the head coach, the list in his hand, walked to the floor and announced:
“I want only the following boys to report here every afternoon for indoor practice. The rest of you, I am sorry to say, will have to wait until the outdoor practice begins, which I hope will be about the tenth of April. But cheer up, fellows, that’s only a little more than three weeks away. These fellows remain—the rest are dismissed for the time being—Blackwell, Stone, Daily, Wiggins, Hart, Gordon, Simmons, Gammage, Sloan, Hecht, Stafford, Runyon, Daws, Gleason, Dixon and Gould. That’s all—er—no—you, too, Thatcher, you stay, please. That’s all.”
Coach Rice paused so perceptibly after Gould’s name that Jeff Thatcher’s heart sank. For a moment he felt that he was going to be denied the privilege of getting the indoor training with the candidates, which he knew was of the utmost importance to men who would have to fight for positions on the team.
Coach Rice had read off the names of all of the older men on the squad,—the men who had been out for the team the year before, and had not intended to add any more new material to the indoor squad. Thatcher was evidently an after thought and Jeff realized that his “Y” uniform and the record his team had made the summer before were entirely responsible for the addition of his name to the list. Evidently Coach Rice expected something of him or he would not have been willing to make him a member of his already large group of indoor candidates.
And as Jeff walked over to join the squad of former players who gathered at one end of the gym. while the rest of the boys disconsolately filed out-of-doors or climbed into the running track balcony to watch the start of indoor training, he wondered vaguely whether he was going to be able to justify the confidence that his uniform had inspired in the veteran coach of the Pennington squad.
Mentally he resolved to do his utmost to make the team, and as he made the resolution he could not help but glance toward Gould, whom he detected looking at him with an unpleasant expression on his dark countenance.
CHAPTER XIV
INDOOR PRACTICE
Indoor practice was not new to Jeff Thatcher. He had had a great deal of it for two successive seasons with the New City Y. M. C. A. team and he knew all about its limitations and its fun as well. The Pennington Institute gym. was not a large one as gymnasiums go and Jeff felt that Mr. Rice had picked a rather large squad for indoor work. There were sixteen husky youngsters capering about the gym. floor, all in baseball togs, save of course the cleated shoes which were tabooed. Instead they all wore rubber-soled basketball shoes to the immediate benefit of both themselves and the gym. floor.
Coach Rice and his assistant let them amuse themselves as they chose for ten minutes while they opened dusty lockers and brought out a variety of gloves and balls and several bats. When these made their appearance there was a wild yell from the squad and they all stampeded in the coach’s direction and made a wild scramble for gloves and balls. Fortunately there were enough to go around or else those who were slow in a scrimmage or the least bit diffident about crowding themselves forward would surely have been left out of the distribution.