Defeat for Clearfield was a foregone conclusion after the first five
minutes of play. Clearfield got her signals mixed, utterly failed to
follow the ball closely, was fooled on the simplest plays and, on the
whole, put up as wretched an exhibition of football as one can imagine.
Locust Valley was well advanced for so early in the season, her
warriors had a diversified attack that was hard to meet and her coach
was a tactician of merit. At the end of the first period Locust Valley
had scored a touchdown by a mixture of old-fashioned line-plunging and
new-fashioned cross-passing and had kicked a goal. Clearfield had not
succeeded in even threatening the opponent’s citadel.
Dick imperturbably put Harry Bryan in at left end and Thad Brimmer at
center and the game went on. Clearfield showed occasional flashes of
real football, as when, half-way through the second period, Lanny,
with Cottrell interfering, ran some thirty yards straight through
the opponents and placed the pigskin on Locust Valley’s twenty-three
yards. But after that the Purple’s offense was too weak to make much
impression on the enemy and the ball was soon being punted back up the
field. Clearfield showed almost no team-play. It was every man for
himself, and some of the individual efforts were extremely crude. The
team’s supporters hoped against hope well into that second period and
then began to grumble. Some of the things that were said about the team
and about the coach were uncomplimentary in the extreme. The kindest
thing that was muttered of Dick by these malcontents was that he didn’t
know enough football to coach a girl’s school! The first half ended
with the score 11 to 0, Locust Valley having failed to kick a goal from
a difficult angle.
To make a long story short, the enemy departed later in the afternoon
with the ball and a 26 to 3 victory. That three points Clearfield
managed to secure in the last five minutes of the battle by the timely
introduction of Morris Brent. Coach Lovering used practically three
elevens that day, and, considering the sort of game put up by some of
the players, it was a wonder that Locust Valley didn’t double her
score! Clearfield retired from the field in a mutinous mood. There was
even talk of a mass meeting to protest against the further retention of
Dick as coach. Clearfield, they said bitterly, had never been beaten
as badly as that in the memory of any student, and only once before
had she failed to win from Locust Valley. It was all very well to make
the Springdale game the goal of the season’s work, but there was no
sense in being licked by every little whipper-snapper of an opponent
meanwhile. Why hadn’t Lovering used the team that had beaten Highland
Hall last Saturday instead of experimenting with every kid who had the
price of a pair of canvas trousers?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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