“That’s right. It looked like a tie game until near the end. Kenly had a man who could boot a wet ball forty yards every time and we had no one to meet him with. But we certainly wore her ends to a frazzle. She used three pairs before she got through! It was nothing but fight and determination that won that game, fellows. On paper we figured about seventy per cent to their one hundred before the start. They had us licked, but they didn’t know it, and we never told them!” “What about this year, sir?” asked Martin. “How many snowstorms are we going to have in January?” asked the coach laughingly. “It’s rather too early for predictions, Proctor. But for all I can see now we’ve got a better show than we had two years ago, and we licked her then. We’re certainly going to be in better shape than last year.” “We’ve got to find a full-back,” said Joe dubiously. “Yes, and a new tackle and maybe an end. But we’ll do it. There’s a lot of good material to pick from this year.” “I suppose you’ve heard, sir, that Kenly’s got that fellow Timmons who played left end on Millwood High last season,” said Bob. “No, is that so? Is he good?” “They say so. Funny thing we don’t seem to catch any of the stars, Mr. Cade.” “We don’t want them, Newhall. Stars are uncertain things. They have a mean way of going out unexpectedly! I’d rather have a bunch of satellites to work with and turn out my own stars!” The others laughed, but Bob shook his head, not altogether convinced. “That’s all right, sir, but you’d think we’d get more good players here. It isn’t as if Alton was a small school or a punk one. Of course those fellows with big reputations don’t always pan out when you get them, but, just the same, I’d like to see some of them head this way now and then!” “I dare say it wouldn’t hurt,” agreed the coach. “But, fellows, the longer I stick at this coaching game the more convinced I am that when it comes to the last analysis it isn’t plays or players that win games; it’s _spirit_! Take eleven corking men, each one a master of his position, and get them so that they play together like a well-oiled machine, and then run them up against a team of ordinary players without much team-work or anything else except a great, big, overwhelming desire to win, and what happens three times out of four? Why, that inferior team wins! She may make mistakes, she may play ragged ball, but grim determination and fight and _spirit_ get her there! You see it happen all the time. I can tell you of twenty games where the best team was beaten just because, while she wanted to win, she didn’t want to win _hard_ enough!” “Yes, sir, I guess that’s so,” agreed Joe. “And I guess it’s a lot easier to teach a team to play good football than it is to put the right spirit in them.”