Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ballEdwards, William H. (William Hanford)
General
Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ball
Edwards, William H. (William Hanford)
Football
What Eddie Mahan was to Harvard, Charlie Barrett, Captain of the
victorious 1915 Eleven, was to Cornell. The Ithaca Captain was one of
those powerful runners whose remarkable physique did not interfere with
his shiftiness. Like his Harvard contemporary, he was a fine leader, but
unlike Mahan, with whom he clashed in the game with the Crimson in his
final year, he was not able to play the play through what was to him
probably the most important gridiron battle of his career. Nevertheless,
it was his touchdown in the first quarter that sounded the knell of the
Crimson hopes that day, and Cornell men will always believe that his
presence on the side line wrapped in a blanket, after his recovery from
the shock that put him out of the game, had much to do with inspiring
his Eleven.
Barrett was one of the products of the Cleveland University School,
whence so many star players have been sent up to the leading
universities. On the occasion of his first appearance at Ithaca it
became a practical certainty that he would not only make the Varsity
Eleven, but would some day be its captain. In course of time it became a
habit for the followers of the Carnelian and White to look to Barrett
for rescue in games that seemed to be hopelessly in the fire.
In his senior year the team was noted for its ability to come from
behind, and this team spirit was generally understood as being the
reflection of that of their leader. The Cornell Captain played the
second and third periods of his final game against Pennsylvania in a
dazed condition, and it is a tribute to his mental and physical
resources that in the last period of that game he played perhaps as fine
football as he had ever shown.
It was from no weakened Pennsylvania Eleven that Barrett snatched the
victory in this his crowded moment. The Quakers had had a disastrous
season up to Thanksgiving Day, but their pluck and rallying power, which
has become a tradition on Franklin Field, was never more in evidence.
The Quakers played with fire, with power and aggressiveness that none
save those who know the Quaker spirit had been led to expect. There
were heroes on the Red and Blue team that day, and without a Barrett at
his best against them, they would have won.
[Illustration: SAM WHITE'S RUN]
It was up to Eddie Hart with his supreme personality and indomitable
spirit, which has always characterized him from the day he entered
Exeter until he forged his way to the leadership of one of Princeton's
finest elevens to bring home the long deferred championship. When the
final whistle rang down the football curtain for the season of 1911 it
found Hart in the ascendancy having fulfilled the wonderful promise of
his old Exeter days. For he had made good indeed.
Yale and Harvard had been beaten through a remarkable combination of
team and individual effort in which Sam White's alertness and DeWitt's
kicking stood out; a combination which was made possible only through
Hart's splendid leadership.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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