Naperville led off with a great kick. Punch, who received the ball, was tackled almost at once, on the Hillcrest thirty-yard line. On two line plunges, Hillcrest picked up seven yards. Then, as Bud Tucker, who played in Kentucky’s place at half, came round the left end, he was hit hard and thrown. The ball leaped from his grasp and was recovered by a Naperville man.
“Ha! Ha! Big joke!” one of the opponents yelled. They had heard this from a defeated team. Now they evidently meant to use it against Hillcrest.
To have the ball in the opponent’s hands on one’s own thirty-seven-yard line at the start of a game is no joke. The hard-hitting Naperville steam roller crushed the Hillcrest line again and again. “First down and ten—” and scarcely a moment later once again, “First down and ten—” From the bleachers came a roar like the breaking of a wild sea:
“Hold that line! Hold that line! Hold that line!”
Kentucky sat like a mummy in his blanket, shuddering and mumbling to himself.
Then, when it seemed that a touchdown was inevitable, once again, “somebody dropped the ball.” This time it was little Artie Stark who recovered. Hillcrest’s ball on their own thirteen-yard line. A quick huddle, a sudden snapping of the ball, a ducking of the head by Punch Dickman, as if to run with it, then a leaping upward like the rise of a submarine, and a quick kick that, catching the opponents off their guard, sent the ball rolling, all unmolested to Naperville’s ten-yard line.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Shedding his blanket as a snake sheds its skin, Kentucky leaped into a wild Indian dance.
But wait! Again that relentless beating back. There came line buck after line buck that Hillcrest’s slender line could not withstand. And after that, with startling suddenness, forward passes. Naperville, too, had learned how to invade the air.
One pass was complete, then a second. As this last pass was caught by a Naperville end, Dynamite too far away to do more than watch, saw him go coursing straight down the field. The ball carrier was followed by his own left-half.
“Punch is there,” Dynamite congratulated himself. “He’ll spill him. And how!”