Then: “Now, fellows, a regular cheer for Mr. Payson!”
Then: “A short cheer for Dickenson!”
And so it went, every player receiving his applause. Finally they cheered for Mr. Rogers, the assistant coach, for the management and for Andy Ryan, ending up in a long nine-times-three for Yardley. Then there was a call for “Loring! Loring! Speech!” Alf stepped to the front of the stand.
“Fellows, there isn’t much to say, I guess,” he began earnestly. “But I do want to thank you all for the way you’ve stood behind the team this year. You’ve been great to us. We spoke of that at dinner to-night, and every fellow on the team or connected with it agreed that the support you have given us has helped more than you know. We had our troubles in the middle of the season, but you didn’t lose faith in us because we were defeated. You kept up our courage, and to-day, when we went onto the field at Broadwood, everyone of us knew that you were right back of us. And that knowledge helped us to win.”
“A-a-ay!” murmured the audience.
“Now that the game is over,” Alf went on, “I’ll say frankly that few of us expected to win it. I didn’t, Mr. Payson didn’t. But we knew you expected us to, and you saw the way the fellows played. I’m proud of having captained such a team. There wasn’t a man on it who didn’t work every minute from the first of the season until the final whistle this afternoon with just the one end in view of beating Broadwood. We’ve pulled together all the fall. Not a man has shirked, and the work wasn’t easy sometimes, either. I want to tell you that you had a mighty fine team this year!”
Loud agreement from the throng below.
“Now, as to next year. You’ll have the start of a good team, for only six of the fellows who started the game to-day graduate this spring. Then there’s a lot of good material on the Second team. And right here I want to thank the members of the Second for the way in which they worked with us. They got more hard knocks than glory, and they deserve a whole lot of praise. So, next year I don’t see any reason why you can’t have another celebration like this. There are some of us up here who won’t be on hand to see it, but we all wish you success, and you may be pretty sure that when the day of the Broadwood game comes none of us will be very far from a bulletin board. Now, I know you want to hear who it is that is to lead next year’s football team to victory. We have chosen him, and we did it on the first ballot. He’s a fellow who has fairly won the honor, not only on account of his playing both last year and this, but because on a certain occasion last fall, when certain defeat at the hands of Broadwood stared us in the face, he endeared himself to us all by an act of self-sacrifice that was finer than all the touchdowns ever made. Fellows, I call for a regular cheer for Captain Vinton!”