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
Hardwick has this to tell of the days when he coached Annapolis:
"One afternoon at Annapolis, the Varsity were playing a practice game
and were not playing to form, or better, possibly, they were not playing
as the coaches had reason to hope. There was an indifference in their
play and a lack of snap and drive in their work that roused Head Coach
Ingram's fighting blood. Incidentally, Ingram is a fighter from his feet
up, every inch, as broad-minded as he is broad-shouldered, and a keen
student of football. The constant letting up of play, and the lack of
fight, annoyed him more and more. At last, a Varsity player sat down and
called for water. Immediately, the cry was taken up by his team mates.
This was more than Ingram could stand. Out he dashed from the side
lines, right into the group of players, shaking his fist and shrieking:
"'Water! Water! What you need is fire, not water!'"
Fred Crolius tells a good story about Foster Sanford when he was
coaching at West Point. One of the most interesting institutions to
coach is West Point. Even in football field practice the same military
spirit is in control, most of the coaches being officers. Only when a
unique character like Sandy appears is the monotony shattered. Sandy is
often humorous in his most serious moments. One afternoon not many weeks
before the Navy game Sandy, as Crolius tells it, was paying particular
attention to Moss, a guard whom Sanford tried to teach to play low. Moss
was very tall and had never appreciated the necessity of bending his
knees and straightening his back. Sanford disgusted with Moss as he saw
him standing nearly erect in a scrimmage, and Sandy's voice would ring
out, "Stop the play, Lieutenant Smith. Give Mr. Moss a side line badge.
Moss, if you want to watch this game, put on a badge, then everybody
will know you've got a right to watch it." In the silence of the parade
ground those few words sounded like a trumpet for a cavalry charge, but
Sandy accomplished his purpose and made a guard of Moss.
The day Princeton played Yale at New Haven in 1899, I had a brother on
each side of the field; one was Princeton Class, 1895, and the other was
an undergraduate at Yale, Class of 1901.
My brother, Dick, told me that his friends at Yale would joke him as to
whether he would root for Yale or Princeton on November 25th of that
year. I did not worry, for I had an idea. A friend of his told me the
following story a week after the game:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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