[CHAPTER VIII]
THE BOY IN THE GREEN SWEATER
The following Wednesday, Willard received promotion of a sort. By that time the number of candidates at practice had noticeably lessened and the four squads had become three. Last year’s first team survivors and a goodly number of the second team players formed Squad A, while some twenty youths who showed particular promise made up Squad B. Into the latter company Willard went. A third squad whose personnel changed from day to day as new candidates appeared or old ones fell out, was known officially as C, but popularly as “The Goats.”
Formation drill had begun and Willard ran through signals at the left half-back position, alternating with another youth named Kruger. Only the simplest formations were used and the pace never exceeded a trot. Preliminary to this, there was tackling practice at the dummy each day, and more or less passing and starting. After formation drill Willard joined nearly a dozen other backfield candidates and put in a half-hour of punting and catching and running. Willard’s kicking education had been rather neglected, for at high school, during the two years he had played, the full-back and quarter had shared the kicking duties. Here, however, it was held that a back should be proficient in every department of the game, and Willard showed up rather poorly beside many of his rivals.
The second eleven came into existence the last of that week and the first real scrimmage of the season took place on Friday between it and the first in preparation for the initial contest the next day. Willard was glad he had not been picked for the second, for he had not yet given up hope of better things, and knew from experience how difficult it is to make one’s way from the second team to the first. Several fellows from Squad C were selected, however, and among them Kruger, which left Willard for awhile in undisputed possession of the left half-back job. It wasn’t long, though, before a weedy, temperamental boy named Longstreth took Kruger’s place. Longstreth had been promoted from the Goats and seemed to have an idea that his mission in life was to inject what he called “tabasco” into Squad B. One way of doing it was to aid in the coaching, and he simply oozed advice to both Coach Cade and Richards, the quarter-back. The coach stood it patiently, but Ned Richards ultimately turned upon him and wounded his sensibilities horribly, so horribly that Longstreth became a changed boy and deliberately let the squad worry along without “tabasco.” But most of this was later on and subsequent to the Alton High School game, which started the season for the Academy.
Willard watched that contest from the bench: or, rather, from a seat on the ground near the bench, since the capacity of the bench was limited. It wasn’t much of a game, even for a first one, and there was nothing approaching excitement in it until, near the end of the third ten-minute period, High School threw a scare into her opponent by scoring a touchdown when Cochran, at right half, dropped the ball and the High School left end scooted away with it for sixty-odd yards and brought joy to the visitors. Academy’s quarter-back ought to have stopped him, but Tarver made a miserable tackle and the runner wrenched himself loose and went over the line without further challenge.
High School missed an easy goal and the score was tied at 6—6, for the Academy had been able to put over but one touchdown against a weaker but plucky enemy and Cochran had missed the goal as badly as the opponent had later. The Academy rooters woke up from their lethargy then, and there was some cheering during the remainder of the period and throughout the last quarter. It was not until the latter was well along, however, that Academy pulled the game out of the fire. Then, working to striking distance by means of two forward-passes that took the ball from midfield to High School’s thirty-yard-line, the Gray-and-Gold hammered the opposing left side until it gave way and Macon, on an end-around play, landed the pigskin over the goal-line. This time, Cochran having given way to a substitute, Tarver tried for a goal and made it, and the game ended a few minutes later with the Academy on the long end of a 13—6 score.
Coach Cade used many substitutes during the final quarter, and Martin Proctor was one of them, and Willard was delighted to see his chum put up a fine game at right guard when Bob went out. At left half, the position that Willard was especially interested in, Arnold Lake played to the end of the third period and then gave place to Mawson. Both played well and Willard was more certain than before that if he was to make the first team this year it would have to be in some other capacity than that of left half!
When the game was done the Squad A players who had not participated were lined up against a Squad B eleven and there followed a short scrimmage in which Willard played left half for B and had a lot of fun. Squad A wasn’t formidable and it was no great stunt to gain outside her tackles, and once Willard got nicely away and would have made the only score of the scrimmage if an obnoxious youth named Hutchins, and better known as “Hutch,” hadn’t pulled him down on the six yards. From there, in spite of all her efforts, B couldn’t make much gain and the fourth down found the ball a yard short of the line. The scrimmage ended with a score and the empty stand attested the amount of interest the game provided the onlookers who had remained after the big contest. But Willard had enjoyed it and won a set of bruised fingers when one of the enemy had set an ungentle foot thereon, and he was quite contented the rest of the evening. But he did a lot of thinking and consulted Martin on the advisability of trying for an end position, and showed no gratitude when he was advised to fatten himself up and try for center!