The following Wednesday, Willard received promotion of a sort. By that time the number of candidates at practice had noticeably lessened and the four squads had become three. Last year’s first team survivors and a goodly number of the second team players formed Squad A, while some twenty youths who showed particular promise made up Squad B. Into the latter company Willard went. A third squad whose personnel changed from day to day as new candidates appeared or old ones fell out, was known officially as C, but popularly as “The Goats.” Formation drill had begun and Willard ran through signals at the left half-back position, alternating with another youth named Kruger. Only the simplest formations were used and the pace never exceeded a trot. Preliminary to this, there was tackling practice at the dummy each day, and more or less passing and starting. After formation drill Willard joined nearly a dozen other backfield candidates and put in a half-hour of punting and catching and running. Willard’s kicking education had been rather neglected, for at high school, during the two years he had played, the full-back and quarter had shared the kicking duties. Here, however, it was held that a back should be proficient in every department of the game, and Willard showed up rather poorly beside many of his rivals. The second eleven came into existence the last of that week and the first real scrimmage of the season took place on Friday between it and the first in preparation for the initial contest the next day. Willard was glad he had not been picked for the second, for he had not yet given up hope of better things, and knew from experience how difficult it is to make one’s way from the second team to the first. Several fellows from Squad C were selected, however, and among them Kruger, which left Willard for awhile in undisputed possession of the left half-back job. It wasn’t long, though, before a weedy, temperamental boy named Longstreth took Kruger’s place. Longstreth had been promoted from the Goats and seemed to have an idea that his mission in life was to inject what he called “tabasco” into Squad B. One way of doing it was to aid in the coaching, and he simply oozed advice to both Coach Cade and Richards, the quarter-back. The coach stood it patiently, but Ned Richards ultimately turned upon him and wounded his sensibilities horribly, so horribly that Longstreth became a changed boy and deliberately let the squad worry along without “tabasco.” But most of this was later on and subsequent to the Alton High School game, which started the season for the Academy.