Jack McMasters was the first trainer that I met. "Scottie," as every one affectionately called him, never asked a man to work for him any harder than he would work himself. In a former chapter you have read how Jack and I put in some hard work together.
I recall a trip to Boston, where Princeton was to play Harvard. Most of the Princeton team had retired for the night. About ten o'clock Arthur Poe came down into the corridor of the Vendome Hotel and told "Scottie" that Bill Church and Johnny Baird were upstairs taking a cold shower.
Jack was furious, and without stopping for the elevator hustled upstairs two steps at a time only to find both of these players sound asleep in bed. Needless to say that Arthur Poe kept out of sight until Jack retired for the night. A trainer's life is not all pleasure.
Once after the train had started from Princeton this same devilish Arthur Poe, as Jack would call him, rushed up forward to where Jack was sitting in the train and said:
"Jack, I don't see Bummie Booth anywhere on the train. I guess he must have been left behind."
With much haste and worry Jack made a hurried search of the entire train to find Booth sitting in the last seat in the rear car with a broad grin on his face.
Jack's training experience was a very broad one. He trained many victorious teams at Harvard after he left Princeton and was finally trainer at Annapolis. A pronounced decoration that adorns "Scottie" is a much admired bunch of gold footballs and baseballs, which he wears suspended from his watch chain—in fact, so many, that he has had to have his chain reinforced. If you could but sit down with Jack and admire this prized collection and listen to some of his prized achievements—humorous stories of the men he has trained and some of the victories which these trophies designate you would agree with me that no two covers could hold them.
But we must leave Jack for the present at home with his family in Sandy Hook Cottage, Drummore by Stranraer, Scotland, in the best of health, happy in his recollection of a service well rendered and appreciated by every one who knew him.
Jim Robinson
There was something about Jim Robinson that made the men who knew him in his training days refer to him as "Dear Old Jim," and although he no longer cries out from the side lines "trot up, men," a favorite expression of his when he wanted to keep the men stirring about, there still lives within all of us who knew him a keen appreciation of his service and loyalty to the different colleges where he trained.