All-American (14 page)

Yippee! Yowser! Now for that football team and the Academy game. He drove across town to the Fuller house at the corner under the bright light where Jim had passed him that night in the Ford with the signs painted on it. Sandra was on the porch. She came down the steps as he stopped. She got into the car.

“Yowser! D’ja hear what I got in the last period marking?”

“I hear you did better than all right.”

“Sure did. Two 95’s and the rest 85.”

“Oh, Ronald! How wonderful! Then you can play football next fall.”

“You bet. If I can make the team.”

“Make the team! Well, now you see what you can do if you really try, don’t you?”

O
NCE ALL THIS HAD
been strange and confusing. Once it had been bewildering; the women teachers, the swarms of kids everywhere, the strange faces, the books you got for nothing instead of buying yourself. Even the books stamped in red on the edges, “Property of the Senior High School,” had been strange. The books with slips pasted inside the front cover reading, “This is the property of the City. Any pupil defacing or losing this book will be required to replace it with a new one.”

Now all this was familiar. Rooms were rooms he knew and had lived in, the teachers were men and women he liked or disliked, the boys and girls were no longer a mass of strange, unaccustomed faces. The rush and confusion of registration seemed normal. The kids he met in the hallways and the various classrooms were now his friends.

“Hullo, Tom; hullo, Jane; hullo, Ruth. You in Mr. Kates’ homeroom this year? So’m I. Hullo, Dave; hullo, Meyer; glad to see you, Meyer. Howsa old whip, Meyer? Hullo, George; hullo, Grace. Nope, got to get my locker number, Bill; justa minute and I’ll be with you. Say, there’s some new boys in class and some new girls, too. Hullo, Steve; hullo, Dan. Why, there’s Ned LeRoy. Hullo, Ned, how are ya, Ned?”

All this was familiar now—the rooms, the corridors with the murals of sport on the walls, the stairways, crowded and jammed between classes, the cafeteria on the third floor, the faces of the boys and girls.

“How do, Mr. Kates. Yes, Mr. Kates. I hope so, Mr. Kates, if I’m good enough to make the team. Yes, I’ll try to keep my marks up like they were the end of last year; yessir, I will, I surely will. Hullo there, Stanley; hullo, Barbara; hullo, Don; hullo, Jim. Why, Jim, how are ya? You betcha, Jim, you betcha! Yeah, he’s a new boy. Mr. Kates introduced him to the class in our homeroom period. Looks like he might be good backfield material.”

During the day Ronald arranged his program. English in 209 under Mrs. Fisk. Physics in 322 under Mr. Vickery. History in his homeroom under Mr. Kates. Virgil in 215 under Mrs. Taylor. French in 304 under Mr. Leonard.

Then it was time to eat. Sitting again at a table in that familiar hall with boys and girls he knew, a thought suddenly struck him. For the first time he didn’t feel a stranger. He was really a part of Abraham Lincoln High. He was used to all this, to the chattering girls, to the noise, the giggling, to the differences between the two schools. Which made him realize that he had spent the whole day without comparing everything with the Academy as he used to do.

Later on, however, he had plenty of chances to compare them. Dressed in shorts and a thin undershirt with football socks and shoes on, he stood in the warm September sunshine with his arms around Meyer and Jim, his friends. The squad made a semicircle on the rich turf, the coach in the center nervously passing a football from one hand to the other. He was different from Baldy, very different from Baldy as Ronald was to discover. That afternoon he wore his baseball uniform with the cap down over his eyes, looking more than ever the professional baseball player; competent, keen, sure of himself and his ability. Silence came over the chattering group.

“For you new men... we have one or two transfers this fall... and also for the sophomores on the squad, I want to start the season by saying this: if you don’t mean business, turn in your suit. If you don’t intend to keep training, turn in your suit right away. Football’s a game that’s tough enough when a man’s fit, and it’s not a game for anyone who won’t train. If you can’t take it and hand it out, too, turn in your suit. Here at Abraham Lincoln we don’t like moral victories. We play hard, we play to win, we like to win. We can’t win all the time; but we hope to win our share. We mean business.

“’Nother thing, I want you to concentrate every day on the work of that day. Don’t want anyone thinking about a possible Intersectional game sometime next winter. Now here in this school we use what is called the T-formation. We use the T-formation with the man in motion. The name T-formation is wrong. Actually this style involves fifty formations, and we use twenty. This end spreads, this end drops, and so forth. I call it the T-formation because everyone else does. Tomorrow I’ll explain it carefully on the blackboard for the newcomers.

“At first you won’t like it, some of you. It’ll seem strange until you get used to it, this formation with a man in motion. It isn’t really novel, in fact it starts from a formation that’s basic to football as developed back in Walter Camp’s day. The real secret lies in the use of the man in motion. This is the thing that helps the offense by confusing the defense. Why does it mix up the defense? Simply because it blends the flanker attack with a hard, fast-hitting, quick-opening attack. Through the various changes in formational structures it places a terrific burden on the defense.

“Naturally a formation of this kind demands letter-perfect execution by the offensive side. It means every single player and every sub, too, must know his assignments down to the smallest detail. There’s no room for sloppiness. There’s lots to learn and not much time to learn it in. Some coaches say high school boys aren’t smart enough to grasp the essentials of the T-formation. I believe they are. Think I’ve proved it by our record here, too. But it means work, hard work, lots of hard work everyday. We have no time for horseplay and fooling. Once more, if you don’t mean business, turn in your suit to Mr. Coughlin—right now.

“The objects of football are simple. First, you must know what to do. Second, how to do it. The signals tell you what to do. The question of how to do it is up to the men on the field themselves. We teach them the idea; but they must use their originality in applying what they are taught.”

He stopped suddenly and glared at them round the circle. There was a pause. No one spoke.

“Ok, let’s go.”

As September wore on and the opening game drew near, Ronny was astonished to discover that the coaching at Abraham Lincoln was really more intensive and perhaps even better than at the Academy. Baldy was a math teacher and a crackerjack; his record in College Board Examinations was as good as that of any teacher in the Academy. He was a fine football coach and could turn out winning teams; but he was a fine football coach secondarily. He was a better teacher. Whereas at Abraham Lincoln the coach taught nothing. His official title was Athletic Director. This fooled no one. Because he was first of all the coach. As such he knew his stuff.

For this guy was a scrapper. He was a scrapper all right. He had played in a very different—and a tougher—league than Baldy’s. Ronny liked Baldy as a man, as a human being, as a friend; but in the weeks of practice that followed under a burning September sun, he had to admit this man understood football. You really had to know the game to coach the T-formation with a man in motion. And the player, you yourself, had to work to learn it, to execute it, to start on the right number, to feel the principles of balanced line blocking, most of all to get the time element involved with the man in motion.

You couldn’t play under Baldy and not know something about football. Yet much of this was fresh to Ronald, and all of it was difficult at first. True, the tackling dummy he was used to. The bucking strap. The charging machine. The practice, the almost endless practice in blocking, too, even though the coach insisted on longer sessions with the machines than he had ever endured. But the eternal drill, drill, drill was tedious and fatiguing. It was drudgery of a kind he had never before experienced. No use talking, football was more fun at the Academy.

New also were some of the difficulties met in the high school brand. At the Academy Steve Ketchum had to work for his scholarship; so did Dave Freeman. Occasionally they were late at the field for practice because of lab work, and certainly waiting on table after a hard practice in the afternoon was far from easy. But many of the players at Abraham Lincoln had jobs, too. They were plenty busy, in school and out. Don Westcott, the center, for instance, was president of the Student Council, led the Glee Club, played football, and worked nights as an usher at the Empire. Moreover the boys all kept strict training at the Academy. They had to. Here they went home and did what they pleased at night.

So naturally the coach was obliged to be tough. He was. Ronald discovered this before their first game when the lineups were read out, and he found to his surprise he was not starting. It was the first time since his Second Form year at the Academy he hadn’t been in the opening lineup. This was a shock. So were the remarks of the coach as they were about to take the field.

“This is an easy game, you fellows, but I expect everyone to go out there just as if we were against Stainesville. Some of you new men may be surprised to find you aren’t starting. Wanna say, here we don’t take you on your reputation. You’ve gotta prove you’re good first of all, you’ve gotta prove it the hard way same as everyone else. You know you’re good all right, your families know you’re good, your girl knows you’re good; but you must show us. You gotta earn your place on this team by your play here, now, today; not by what you did last year.

“All right! Get out there, team. Lemme see what you’ve got.”

Consequently Ronald found himself watching instead of starting that game, and others, too. They came up to the important meeting with Broadwood High undefeated.

If we can beat Broadwood today, we’ll only have Stainesville and the Academy left for an undefeated season. Some of the kids said if we licked Stainesville we might even be asked to play Intersectional. Especially if we should end up by beating the Academy. Because if we beat the Academy we’ll be the best team in the State, no mistake. But they’ll be tough, those babies, they sure will. On account of me they’ll be all out to trim us. And we’ll be kinda tough, too, maybe.

During the first half and part of the second Ronald sat on the bench beside the coach.

“Fairchild, you’ll start today at quarter; Perry, I want you to sit beside me,” said the coach in the lockers.

So Ronny stayed on the sidelines, watching Stan Fairchild run the team. As he watched, Ronny realized that running a team from a T-formation was no cinch. There were plenty of mistakes a quarter could make, and if Stanley made some, he could have made more. In fact as they went along into the third quarter without any score, Ronald found himself just as pleased he hadn’t started the game. Far too much depended on it.

None of Stan’s errors escaped the eyes of the coach, who through much of the play was dictating to Gordon Brewster at his side. “Shoot! Why doesn’t he watch that left half coming up? That defensive halfback is leaving that spot wide open for our 67 pass.

“There! There goes 99 into the middle. That’s all right; I’d have picked that play. Third and five.

“Hullo... he’s passing! It’s 69 on the weak side. There goes their right half; he’s got it... no, he just knocked it down. Stan was rushed then; well, it wasn’t the play to use, anyhow. And Dave should have dropped back and out to protect, the way he’s been taught. Fourth and five; he’s got to kick, got to.”

The kick was a long spiral down the field. The coach settled back for a minute and turned to Ronald. “See what I’m trying to tell these boys? The element of surprise is what wins games. Pass when they expect a run and run when they’re watching for your pass. And don’t forget the quick-kick, either. The quick-kick’s one of the greatest weapons you’ve got; it can change a whole game.

“Hey there! Hey, Stan, watch out! Look out, Stan!”

As he had been speaking the teams lined up, with their opponents in the usual single-wing formation, the ball on the 30-yard line. Stan, in safety position, was only about 20 yards back. The ball went to the tailback five yards behind the line of scrimmage, and the interference started toward the right as if for a normal running play. Only the left half didn’t run. He took one step forward and quickly kicked the ball. It sailed over Stan’s head, bumped and bounded along until it came to a rest on the 25-yard line. The team were now well back in their own territory.

“Shoot! Just what I was saying.” Ronald recalled once long before, playing at the Academy, he had been caught the same way and hoped fervently he wouldn’t have been caught this time. “Remember,” said the coach. “Remember what I was telling you; remember only last Wednesday how we worked on that quick-kick? Remember, I told you it was a good play, especially with the wind at your back. Well, most likely they had the same kind of session, only they remembered. Now look where we are; back in our own territory where we can’t afford to take any chances.

“What’s that? Why, sure; you’re quite right, Ronny; Stacey should have been able to spot that play and yelled. D’ja notice their tackle edge out on him when they lined up? Good boy. He wanted to get down fast to cover. That should have been the tip. Stan better kick on second down this time; we’ll lose plenty on the exchange, plenty. But if he waits until third down, they’ll know a kick is coming... it’s the element of surprise that wins football games.”

Ronny ventured a question. “How about our pass down the middle right now, Coach, our 48? Wouldn’t that cross ’em up? They’re certainly not expecting it.”

“You’re right they aren’t expecting it. But in this zone, with the score so close, it’s dangerous. If we were trailing by a touchdown, it might be ok. If we were behind two touchdowns, yes, definitely, that would be the play. But an interception right here would put them in a scoring position. One of the things you quarterbacks must learn is when to take chances and when not to. Right now the thing to do is to get out of this hole without giving them a scoring chance.”