“As near as I can learn, Adams has a rattling good team. She’s met with only one defeat this season. She has five of last year’s team with her, she has a good coach and she has developed a coaching system that’s been working pretty well—as you fellows here at Riverport ought to know. Her line is slightly heavier than ours and it’s just as quick. Her back-field is extremely good and we’ve got nothing on her there. And she’s got a quarter who is as good a general as there is on a school team to-day. So team for team it looks like a pretty even thing, with the odds slightly in favor of Adams. Of course on team-play she must be far more advanced than we are, for her men have been playing together for a full month while our team, as it will line up to-day, has never played together. I’m not trying to discourage you. We’re pretty well handicapped, I own, but we’re not beaten. These plays we’ve just gone over ought to help. Most of them are either quite new or are new variations of old plays. If you get so you can put them through right I shouldn’t be surprised to find that they bothered Adams a whole lot. Now it all depends on how you fellows take hold during the next two days. You must work hard and use your brains. I think we can learn a lot of football in two days if we make up our minds to it. Now, then, all out on the run.”
Practice went well that day. The cold weather still held and put snap into the players. To his surprise and secret distress Evan found himself on the side-line when the scrimmage began, with Miller in his place. Peeble followed Miller at quarter and still Evan adorned the bench. He got in finally for the last four or five minutes and Duffield smiled at the eager way in which he raced on to the field and pushed Peeble aside.
“I guess,” muttered the coach to himself, “I needed to be afraid of over-working him.”
In obedience to instructions, Evan began pulling off the new plays, and, although the Second knew them as well as the First, she couldn’t stop them. In three minutes of actual playing time the First scored the only touchdown of the day, Shaler being slammed through the line for the final three yards.
There was a good forty-five minutes of signal work in the gymnasium that evening, the players walking or trotting through the drill in canvas shoes. On Wednesday there was another long period of outdoor work in the afternoon and again signal-drill at night. At the end Duffield spoke to them.
“Well, fellows, work is over for this year. You’ve taken hold, most every one of you, in just the way I hoped you would. You’ve worked hard and conscientiously and I think you’ve learned a good deal. Just how much you have learned remains for you to show to-morrow. I can’t call you a wonderful team, for neither you nor I have had time to work wonders, but I think if you’ll all play the best you know how to-morrow the School won’t be disappointed in you.”