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
Go and talk to the trainer of the football team if you want to get an
unbiased opinion of the team's work or of the value of the individual
coaches. Some of our trainers know much about the game of football--the
technical side--and their advice is valuable.
Every trainer longs to handle good material, but more power to the
trainer who goes ahead with what he's got and makes the best out of it
without a murmur. In our recollections we know of teams that were
reported to be going stale--"over-trained"--"a team of cripples"--who
slumped--could not stand the test--were easily winded--could not endure.
They were nightmares to the trainer. Soon you read in the daily press
indications that a change of trainer is about to take place in such a
college.
Then we turn to another page of our recollections where we read:
"The team is fit to play the game of their lives." "Only eleven men
were used in to-day's game." "Great tribute to the trainer." "Men could
have played all day"--"no time taken out"--"not a man injured"--"pink of
condition." Usually all this spells victory.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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