The boys of Columbia High on the gridiron : $b or, The struggle for the silver cupForbes, Graham B.
General
The boys of Columbia High on the gridiron : $b or, The struggle for the silver cup
Forbes, Graham B.
Football -- Juvenile fiction; High school students -- Juvenile fiction
"Because those Bellport bulldogs have got blood in their eyes now.
The coach has been combing them down, and they're just bound to
carry things before them, or die trying. It's going to be hotter
than ever, Buster."
"But Frank has been saying things, too. And our boys have the
benefit of the experience of one who was a terror on the lines of
Princeton, my especial friend, Coach Willoughby," remarked Buster,
proudly. "He's set 'em up a few capers that are going to surprise
our good Bellport friends. I'm game to stack up on Columbia. I
only hope some of those Bellport players like Bardwell and
Banghardt don't try foul tactics on us, like they did in baseball,
that's all."
"The referee has his eye on 'em. He has been warned, and let them
try it at their peril. If those two dangerous half-backs are put
off the team it'll go to pieces in a hurry, mark my words. That's
what I'm expecting it to end in."
But Jack was mistaken. Bellport knew the folly of attempting
anything that had a suspicious look. Brawn and strategy and
agility must carry the day, no matter which side won.
Shrilly blew the whistle, and once more the ball, yellow no
longer, for it had been ground into the dirt, sailed through the
air. There was an exchange of punts that ended when Bellport held
the pigskin on her forty-yard line and the signal came for a play
around Columbia's left end.
"Watch out now, fellows!" warned Frank Allen. "Don't let 'em get
through, or past you."
"Eighteen--twenty-seven--sixty--all together--fourteen!" chanted
Snodgrass, and back the ball was snapped to him. In a flash he
passed it to Bardwell, who started as though to circle Shadduck at
right end. And then that trick, so often worked, so effective when
it comes out right, and so futile when it does not, was tried.
Bardwell passed the ball to Banghardt on the run, and the left-half
started for the end where Morris was.
How it happened none of the Columbia players, not even Morris
himself, could tell, but he was drawn in by the double pass and
his end was free to be circled by Banghardt. Even the Columbia two
half-backs were fooled, and no excuse for it, either, as they
admitted afterward, for they had often worked the play themselves.
Be that as it may, Banghardt was past, and with no one between him
and the goal line but Comfort.
But the full-back was a tower of strength, and with eagerly
outstretched hands he waited the oncoming of the left half.
"Get him, Comfort! Get him!" pleaded the crowd.
Straight at the full-back came Banghardt, and then, with a sudden
shifting, he turned aside, and Comfort grasped only the empty air,
while the man with the ball, amid the wild, excited cries of the
adherents of his school, while the grandstands fairly rocked under
the impact of thousands of stamping feet, touched down the
pigskin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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