Football -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
Leonard whanged into an opponent and tipped him neatly aside as
Kendall came spinning through. Three yards, easy. Maybe four. This
was “pie!” He got back to his place again and grinned at his second
team adversary. The scrub player answered the grin with a malignant
scowl. Leonard laughed to himself. He always liked the other fellow
to get good and peeved; that made it easier. Dakin was stopped short
on the next play and Kendall went back. A second team back tried to
sneak inside of Leonard, and Leonard gave him a welcoming shoulder.
Then there was the thud of the ball and he pushed an adversary aside
and sped down the field, the gale behind him helping him on. He was
under the ball all the way and was hard by when Kerrison upset the
scrub quarter for no gain. The pigskin was on the second’s fourteen
now, and the second realized its difficulties. Kicking into that wind
was a thankless job. If you kicked low your ends couldn’t cover the
punt. If you kicked high you made no distance. Even a forward-pass,
were you rash enough to attempt it under your own goal-posts, was
doubly risky. So second tried hard to get a half-back around an end,
first at Gurley’s post and then at Kerrison’s, and made but four yards
altogether. It seemed then that second must punt, but she had one more
trick up her sleeve. She sent an end far out to the left, shifted to
the right and sent the full-back straight ahead. Well, that wasn’t so
bad, for it added another four yards to her total. But it was fourth
down, and the wind still blew hard against her, and punt she must at
last. So punt she tried to.
That she didn’t was primarily due to the ease with which Leonard
disposed of his man and went romping through the scrub line, quite
alone for the instant. A half met him, and the impact, since Leonard
had his hands thrown high, almost drove the breath from his body.
Yet the damage was done, for the second team kicker was too hurried
to punt. Instead, he tucked the ball to his elbow and shot off to
the right in a desperate attempt to circle the first team’s end. But
there was Gurley to be considered, and Gurley dropped his man very
expeditiously and neatly for a six-yard loss. Whereupon first took the
ball, lined up on the scrub’s sixteen and hammered Goodwin and Dakin
over for the score.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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