Tom Shevlin's undergraduate life at New Haven was not all strewn with roses, but he was glad always to go back when requested and put his shoulder to the wheel. The request came usually at a time when Yale's football was in the slough of despond. He was known as Yale's emergency coach.
Tom Shevlin had nerve. He must have been full of it to tackle the great job which was put before him in the fall of 1915. Willingly did he respond and great was the reward.
When I saw him in New York, on his way to New Haven, I told him what a great honor I thought it was for Yale to single him out from all her coaches at this critical time to come back and try to put the Yale team in shape. It did not seem either to enthuse or worry him very much. He said:
"I just got a telegram from Mike Sweeney to wait and see him in New York before going to New Haven. I suppose he wants to advise me not to go and tackle the job, but I'm going just the same. Yale can't be much worse off for my going than she is to-day."
The result of Shevlin's coaching is well known to all, and I shall always remember him after the game with that contented happy look upon his face as I congratulated him while he stood on a bench in front of the Yale stand, watching the Yale undergraduates carry their victorious team off the field. Walter Camp stood in the distance and Shevlin yelled to him:
"Well, how about it, Walter?"
This victory will go down in Yale's football history as an almost miraculous event. Here was a team beaten many times by small colleges, humiliated and frowned upon not only by Yale, but by the entire college world. They presented themselves in the Yale bowl ready to make their last stand.
As for Princeton it seemed only a question as to how large her score would be. Men had gone to cheer for Princeton who for many years had looked forward to a decisive victory over Yale. The game was already bottled up before it started; but when Yale's future football history is written, when captain and coaches talk to the team before the game next year, when mass meetings are called to arouse college spirit, at banquets where victorious teams are the heroes of the occasion, some one will stand forth and tell the story of the great fighting spirit that Captain Wilson and his gallant team exhibited in the Yale bowl that November day.
Although Tom Shevlin, the man that made it possible, is now dead, his memory at Yale is sacred and will live long. Many will recall his wonderful playing, his power of leadership, his Yale captaincy, his devotion to Yale at a time when he was most needed. If, in the last game against Harvard, the team that fought so wonderfully well against Princeton could not do the impossible and defeat the great Haughton machine, it was not Shevlin's fault. It simply could not be done. It lessens in not the slightest degree the tribute that we pay to Tom Shevlin.
Francis H. Burr