Football -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
in the race, but, like the full-back, never reached the runner until
the line had been crossed.
Cumner’s supporters went wild with joy, and long after the pigskin
had been punted out from the corner of the gridiron to a waiting left
guard, their howls and cheers arose from across the field. Sid forebore
to say “I told you so,” but Stanley sadly apologised. “I retract what
I said, Sid,” he stated dolefully. “You’re not a bum prophet. You’re a
prophetic bum!”
Cumner kicked goal easily after the punt-out and when the ball
had again sailed through the air the first quarter ended. That
twelve-minute period, however, spelled ultimate disaster for the home
team, for although Cumner did not score again, Parkinson failed to
score at all! Twice she came near to it, once in the second quarter
and once in the third. In the second she slammed her way to Cumner’s
seven yards, lost ten yards on a penalty, and failed of a field-goal by
inches only. In the third period she reached her opponent’s four yards
only to have Kirkendall’s last effort fail by a scant six inches. That
was bitter medicine to the Brown-and-White, and after that failure all
the fight seemed to have gone out of her. In the final period, with
many substitutes in, she showed some life, to be sure, but there wasn’t
punch enough left to make her dangerous, and Cumner, still playing with
her first line-up practically intact, kicked out of danger whenever it
threatened.
Going back to the campus after Cumner, cheering and singing, had
marched triumphantly under the goals, Sid predicted a shake-up in the
team. “You can’t tell me,” he said, “that we had any right to get
licked today. That flukey play of Cumner’s that got them their score
may have been unpreventable, although I don’t think so, but where we
fell down hard was in that third period when K couldn’t get across. It
isn’t allowable for a Parkinson team to get to the four yards and not
get over. It isn’t done among the best Parkinson teams!”
“I thought,” observed Dick, “that Kirkendall should have been sent
around tackle on that last play. We’d hammered their centre three times
and they were looking for us to do it again and they’d massed their
whole secondary defence behind it. Seems to me----”
“I think so too,” agreed Sid. “Give ’em what they aren’t expecting, is
my motto. Stone ought to have kept them guessing. His idea, I suppose,
was that if he hammered the centre long enough it would weaken. Even
their backs couldn’t have stopped a score if the line had busted, Dick.
You see, we needed only a yard at the last and we’d have got it if
their centre had weakened a bit more. It’s easy to criticise from the
grand-stand, but it’s likely that Stone knew more than we did about
those fellows he was facing. He probably had good reason to think he
could smash K through there. Must have or he wouldn’t have persisted
the way he did. Well, we’ll have to do better next week or we’ll get a
good trouncing.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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