I might devote several pages to the Alton-Kenly game, but it really doesn’t deserve it. Seen in retrospect, it was not an uncommonly enthralling battle, although at the time there was excitement enough. You know without my telling it that Alton won. I think she would have won even without the assistance of Bob and Martin and Willard, for she had made up her mind to conquer and I don’t believe that anything Kenly could have done that afternoon would have prevented her from winning. As it was, Alton showed her superiority from the first and the outcome was never for an instant in doubt. Coach Cade had pleaded for the first score, for, like many coaches, he was a believer in the axiom which says: The team that scores first wins the game. And Alton gave him his wish when Cochran slid over the Kenly goal-line at the end of seven minutes of play for the initial touchdown.
Alton played good football that afternoon, played better football than her most hopeful supporter dared expect, and Kenly was fortunate to get the six points that came to her in the second period. Those six points constituted the only dregs in Alton’s cup of happiness, for, after McNatt had hurled himself across the last four yards that separated the Gray-and-Gold from the Kenly goal in the first few moments of the second quarter and Macon had brought the total to 14 points, it seemed to Alton that she would not only win but keep the adversary scoreless. That, however, was not to be, for Kenly, although outplayed during most of the game, enjoyed one flash of desperate, heroic and successful endeavor. Getting possession of the ball on Alton’s thirty-eight yards, she made two forward-passes good and landed on the twelve. From there, in spite of the home team’s savage defense, she smashed her way to the seven in three attacks and then threw over the line for a score.
Yet Alton avenged that insult in the third period and again in the fourth, and might have done so once again in the last few minutes had not the substitutes, thrown in helter-skelter as the end drew close, suffered three successive penalties for over-eagerness. It was hard to pick the stars in the Alton eleven, for not a man stopped short of excellence. Possibly it was McNatt who shone the brightest, for the full-back had all that the others had of skill and spirit with, besides, a certain other quality which, for want of a better name, and at the risk of ridicule, I must call science. It was McNatt who stopped the much-touted Puckhaber time and again and fairly stood him on his head. It was McNatt who twice hurled himself across the Kenly goal-line for a score. And it was McNatt who, flaming himself with a white-hot intensity of purpose, constantly encouraged the others to fairly superhuman efforts.
But to speak too much of McNatt would be unfair to the rest: to Captain Joe Myers, and to Gil Tarver, who ran the team as never before, and to Bob and Martin and, finally, Willard, who, although he didn’t see service until the third period started, played a wonderful game at left half. That run that started on Alton’s twenty-eight yards and ended on Kenly’s seventeen was made by Willard, and Willard it was who, near the last of the contest, took Tarver’s long heave down the field and added another dozen yards to it, so preparing the way for McNatt’s final touchdown. [It was Alton’s day all through], and it is doubtful if there was ever a more stunned and disappointed team than Kenly when the last whistle blew and the score of 26 to 6 stared down at her from the board. That single touchdown afforded her scant comfort, it seemed.
[It was Alton’s day all through]
Alton made merry that night. There was a parade that wound in and out of the town and back across the Green several times, and much singing and much cheering. It was while they were perched side by side in the rickety wagon that, serving as a chariot for the heroes, was drawn at the head of the procession, that Willard said to McNatt during a lull in the clamor: “How did you ever think of that scheme, McNatt?”
And McNatt, smiling, answered: “Well, Harmon, there’s a scientific way of doing everything, you know. And that was the scientific way of doing that!”
THE END