The play that won

by Ralph Henry Barbour

I ought to say here that Hollins had been having a run of perfectly rotten luck for four years. Enwright Academy was our big rival and Enwright had beaten us three times and played us to a scoreless tie once in those four years. It had got so that a win over the blue and gold was something mythical, like the dodo or the dope about Hercules and the Nemean lion. No one in school when I was there had ever seen Hollins beat Enwright at football and we’d got so that we’d stopped hoping, or at least expecting, anything like that to happen. And along about the middle of October, by which time we had been licked three times, we had resigned ourselves to the regular programme: mass meetings, secret practice, plenty of cheering, bluffing to the last minute and—defeat.

We played a ten game schedule that year. The week before the Enwright game we had Gloversville coming back for a return engagement, Gloversville being calculated to give us good practice and no risk of injuries to our players.

About the last week in October I got a surprise. I went down to the field one Thursday afternoon with a couple of the fellows to watch practice. Morgan had started secret sessions, but to-day they had opened the gates. There had been several cuts in the squad by that time and only the first and second teams were left; perhaps thirty-four or five fellows in all. They were scrimmaging when we got there and the second was trying to get over the first’s goal line from the fifteen yards. They made two tries, wide end runs both of them, and didn’t gain an inch, but after each play I noticed that one of the second team men had to trot back about twenty yards to get into position again. Whoever he was, he had just romped through the first’s line and was behind the goal posts each time. Then, when we had got over opposite the play, I saw that it was Joe Talmadge. On the next down the second’s quarter fumbled and after the ball had rolled around awhile the second team’s full-back fell on it. It seemed to me that almost any one of the first team forwards should have broken through and got that pigskin, but they didn’t, and it dawned on me that the reason they didn’t was just because the second’s center had been too stiff for them. After the second had tried a place kick and failed, the ball went back to mid-field, and during the next seven or eight minutes of that scrimmage I watched Joe closely. And what I saw made me wonder if Coach Morgan had lost his eyesight, for Joe simply played Pride to a standstill. Not once did the first make a gain anywhere near the middle of the second team’s line, and when the second finally got the pigskin again, after Stringer had made a mess of a run around left end, it was always Joe who led the way through. He would just spin Pride around like a top, or push him back like he was a straw man, and romp past him. But why Morgan didn’t see it was more than I could figure out, and that evening, after commons, I tackled Captain Truitt. Tru and I were pretty good friends, for I had got him into Arcanium the year before.

“Talmadge?” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I know, Zach. He’s been putting up a corking game on the second right along for two weeks, but when we try him on the first he falls down flat. We’ve had him over twice. The first time we thought it was stage fright, but he was just as bad the next. Sometimes fellows are like that. They’ll work like Trojans for the scrubs and be no earthly good on the first. Coach hauled him over the coals last week about it and all Talmadge could say was that ‘he didn’t know.’ Too bad, for he’d come mighty near to making trouble for Enwright.”

“It doesn’t sound like sense to me,” I said. “If he can play like a whirlwind on one team why can’t he do it on another.”

“Search me,” said Tru, “but some fellows are like that. Coach talks of trying him again Saturday against Wooster High. I don’t know if he will, though, for we can’t afford to take any chances. I’d like mighty well,” he added bitterly, “to win one more game this season.”

“One!” said I. “Oh, run away, Tru! The trouble with you chaps is that you’ve lost faith in yourselves. You’re so used to getting the short end of it that you can’t believe in winning. Buck up!”

“That’s a fact, old man! I believe you’re dead right. We’re so used to being rotten that we don’t know how to be anything else. What we need is one of these psychology sharks to come around and sort of hypnotize us into a new state of mind. Short of that, Zach, we’ll do the same old stunt again.”

“Psychology, your grandmother! Use your beans! Why shouldn’t we win from Enwright? What’s to prevent? Why——”