Marsters in Uniform
A piece of good news that all MAGAZINE readers will be glad to hear is the fact that Al Marsters is working out with the basketball team. Marsters has recovered from the most unfortunate injury which ever befell a Dartmouth athlete, and he has been able to discard his brace which he was forced to wear for nearly two months. We are still able to get excited over the Yale-Dartmouth football game, and we still maintain that had not Marsters' career been cut short in such a fashion the critics would have been talking about Dartmouth as the greatest team in the country rather than some of the others which well merit such an appellation.
Marsters' entry into basketball does not look too serious, although the little he has worked out on the court shows him adept at the game. He is one of those rare types of athletes who are able to do anything well. Of him Dolly Stark says "I should like to have Marsters on my team even if he did not score a basket all season for us. He has that wonderful spark of competitive spirit which is not common to every player."
Turning back to football, we noticed that Jim Oberlander has been appointed head coach of the Wesleyan football team for the coming year. We remember Oberlander's football exploits only too clearly, but we also remember him during our year when the writer and Mr. Bevo Borella roomed over in Richardson Hall. That is when cross word puzzles were the hysteric craze of the day, and Obie sometimes needed help on the more difficult ones. Mr. Borella, who, with Chick Shea, is at present the only living undergraduate who remembers the old days, used to do his best with the puzzles, but if he could not help out the situation the party degenerated into a free for all wrestling match with Oberlander as the chief participant. And good natured as he was, the Swede was the most powerful man this writer has ever run up against, as Mr. Borella will testify. He knows no limits, and once we had to revive Mr. Borella for fully five minutes after Obie had playfully sunk him two feet in the window seat.
Obie was not the grim, hard player that sports writers used to describe him, but he was as full of fun as the next man. His wrestling was nothing to be laughed at, as several of the athletes of that era can testify. We can remember one very distinguished member of the baseball team, who weighed around 185, being bodily picked up by Obie and turned upside down, very much against his will in an ash barrel. But then, we are digressing from the main subject; our heartiest congratulations to Mr. Andrew James Oberlander on his appointment!
And the next Dartmouth figure to get a special mention this month is no less than Harry Hillman who in January completed his twentieth year as a member of the athletic department. It does not seem possible to we of the younger generation that Harry has been on the job for two decades, or as one of his well wishers put, one-fifth of a century. He is youth personified, and those who see him ever present on the football field when a man is hurt will remember him as the same Harry Hillman they knew quite a long time ago.
Hillman is part of Dartmouth College. Coming here in 1910, following a sensational career on the cinder paths, he immediately stepped into a position which he has not relinquished for the reason that Dartmouth had found the right man. His track exploits as a member of the New York A. C. need no recounting here. Possessor of some 35 records, Olympic runner and later coach, Hillman has had a colorful career. Dartmouth voted him a major "D" in 1924 for his service to the college. May he continue at Dartmouth for a long time.
The other winter teams have not started their schedules as yet, or have not as yet progressed far enough in them to warrant accurate comment. The boxing and fencing teams come in the former category, and the swimming team with one good victory over Brown, falls in the latter. More about all next month.
