With Phil Sherman
At the start of another football season it is always difficult to appraise the new material which reports, and it is equally as hard to work up a pre-season enthusiasm when the squad is merely going through fundamentals from day to day.
At this writing Jack Cannell has a likely looking bunch out on the field twice a day, and veteran backs mingle with hefty sophomores, all vying with one another for starting honors in the games to come.
No matter what has been written in the papers, and no matter what rumors may fly to the outlying districts, I think that Dartmouth will again be represented by another fine football team this year. We are used to the cry of no material, and we have become fed up with the premature wailings of a few who claim that Dartmouth, by losing the heart of the line by graduation, will not have a strong team.
I believe that Jack Cannell is very honest in his remarks, such as the "I don't see how we will have enough material for more than one eleven" he said the first day, but after all Jack has to be just as much a psychologist as the next coach in these days of master strategy and Dobieisms.
You take fellows like Paul Crehan and Gay Bromberg out of a team, and you are bound to suffer in defense immeasurably, but at the same time the cry went up over the loss of the Oberlanders, Bjorkmans and Dooleys of yesterday and somehow their places were filled and the spirit carried on. Football is a succession of personalities, and no matter how much we try to visualise the team as a "machine" and an "eleven" like the famous advertisement, one will always stand out.
Some years ago I tried to dope a full season in advance, and when the copies of that number were issued went into a three months' hibernation to escape the "I told you so's" of an army of friends. This year there will be no predictions; possibly only a few hints.
The rumor is already going the rounds that this is Dartmouth's year against Yale, and while this story will undoubtedly boost the ticket sale to the Bowl classic, there is not much to substantiate. We took a vow some years ago, a vow of blue pessimism regarding the Yale game, which said that we would always be gloomy before the game and would make nothing but dire predictions. This year's story runs to the fact that Yale will be played before Harvard, and hence the team will enter the game fresh without a gruelling Harvard contest behind them. Jack Cannell discounts this with a wave of the hand, and states that it will not make a single bit of difference when the Yale game is played.
Bill King, feature writer for the Associated Press, was in town a few days ago, and Bill pointed out that the construction of the Bowl itself was grounds for the depression. Bill's solution, however improbable, is interesting, for he would have one of the motion picture companies erect a knock-down replica of the Bowl on Memorial Field and have the team practise in it.
Familiar faces abound in this Dartmouth team of 1931. Those of you who saw the games last year will not see much change in a backfield which numbers Will Morton, Wild Bill McCall, Aarne Frigard and Bob Wilkin this year, for they are all back again.
Bill McCall should be the East's outstanding back of the year and he should compete for top honors in the country as a great halfback. We said it before and we repeat it again that the Wild One from Muskegon has every requisite that a good football player should possess, and only the unforseen happenings of football should keep him from becoming one of the best backs to wear the Green.
Will- Morton has been playing quarterback ever since that dismal afternoon at Yale when A 1 Marsters was carried off the field, and although there are plenty of football followers who say that Will should never be in as quarterback, it is a fact that he has more control, command of respect and poise than any other candidate. Will, the ideal fullback type, has had a queer career at quarter, and each season when we are looking for a successor he goes on as blithely and steadily as anyone on the squad.
At this time of the year, I never mention many sophomores, and the reason is apparent. We have seen so many come and go, and so many hopes dashed into a teapot during the first hard weeks that reputations mean nothing in varsity football. The freshman captains have been notorious hard luck players and it is the unsung man that gets the position.
But I would like to call attention to a gentleman who should have a great career at Dartmouth. He is Sammy Fishman, which name will be changed to Shotgun if he gets away, and he piloted the 1934 freshman team to an undefeated season last year. Fishman looks, acts and carries himself like a fine player and a weather eye will be out for his accomplishments.
Now about this line. The current problem of the month is the condition of that fine sportsman and gentleman Stan Yudicky, who captains the 1931 football team.
Yudicky, out for the great part of the 1930 season with an injured knee, was so well liked by his teammates that he was honored with the leadership this year. He was operated on last March, and the incision was a long and serious one. He is back with the team after a summer spent on the golf links (pushing a lawn mower to keep his leg active) and at present looks his old self again. But a knee, much the same as Dick Black's and Len Clark's, is all right for ordinary walking but is entirely another thing when hit by a hard flying halfback.
We are all hoping and praying that Stan will enjoy a great season. No harder hitting end ever played for Dartmouth, and Bill Cunningham is the authority for the statement that the hardest tackle he ever saw in a football game was made by Yudicky on Dunn of Yale in 1929.
Harold Mackey plays the other end, and his work is well known. Jay Whitehair is married and out of college, and Dartmouth loses a man who was one of the real stars in the Stanford game last year. A young fellow named Mansfield, a sophomore, looks well in practise. Larry Durgin has been shifted to tackle, and Forrest Branch has gone back to his old love, center, at which position he was chosen as an all Massachusetts center in 1928.
Big Hennery Barber, weighing 235 and oh my, is back again at a tackle position, and one of the really unsung heroes of the gridiron, Fred Roe, was placed at the other tackle position. Fred Roe has been on the squad for three years, and during that time has usually played the part of the faithful scrub who takes all the beatings from the varsity. It would be a wondering human interest story, much the same tenor as Len KillKelly's in 1927, if Roe could make good.
Whit Kimball is back at center, and those of you West Coast people who saw the Stanford game will remember a human typhoon who played his heart out for two heated periods against the best the Cardinals had to offer.
The guard positions find Bill Hoffman, bronzed and hard from a Summer camp position, playing right. At left is Chet Pyles, who is a real veteran in service.
There is your varsity lineup. Not a sophomore in the group! The second string backfield, piloted by Eddie Toothaker, is composed of Red Porter, Bill Brister and Dick Haugen. Another all-veteran outfit.
The sophomores will come along, and already there is the usual crop of stars in the making. Pat Holbrook has done such a fine job during his two-year tenure as head coach that the material is coming up regularly. But these kids are just names now, and their day will come later. It is a little too early to make stars out of fellows who have not yet had , their baptism on the field and it helps neither themselves nor the coaches to boost them before the boosting is due.
There is a long hard row to hoe before the team thunders into Cambridge to meet Stanford. Stanley Woodward, one of the Herald Tribune's really fine writers, was in town and called the Dartmouth schedule the hardest in the East.
Holy Cross will be the first test of the season, and McEwan is leaving no stone unturned to bring a fine team to Hanover. This department is trying to put the game on the air for the benefit of those who cannot attend, and I hope that it is possible.
Many have asked about the Dartmouth attack, but no definite answer can be given at this stage. For those who like their football technical, we might say that the Green offense looks much the same as last season's. That is, a key back will take most of the passes directly from center, and the halfback will get the ball mostly on reverse plays. One wing back is split between tackle and end, and the other is wide.
Forward passes have been stressed a great deal during these opening days, in contrast to last season when the aerial game was decidedly a secondary factor in the Dartmouth repertoire. Perhaps the thrill of that Cornell game when Dartmouth took to the air to wrest a game from Cornell's grip softened Cannell's heart on the passes. Against Stanford the air attack was at best haphazard, with huge tosses going uncaught, and this season may see a turn about on this phase of the game.
Cannell has the material for a fine pass attack. Will Morton is a good man for short, quick tosses, and Wild Bill McCall snares them high wide and handsome in the open field. It was McCall who caught the forward for Dartmouth's only touchdown against the Navy, and again it was the same McCall who shared in A1 Marsters' great five minutes against Yale. He is too valuable a man to overlook on a passing surge. Fishman is reputed to be a good passer, but I did not see a single freshman game last year and am not a good judge for that reason.
The foregoing is the setup, then, for this time of the year. There is so much work to be done, and so many plays to be learned that it will not be until the next issue that a real prospective can be given of the team.
Etching by Carton Moorepark (''Courtesy New Gallery, N. I7.")
W. H. MORTON '32 of New Rochelle, N. Y. Veteran quarterback who is also captain of hockey
R. C. WILKIN '32 of Salt Lake City, fullback and star for two years.
