"SANE OPTIMISM" FOR FOOTBALL
Coach Blaik Provides Keynote to First Seasonin Discussing the Task at Hand
TALKING over the Dartmouth football situation with Earl Blaik was an experience. I arrived at the Davis Field House at 8:30 in the evening; and when I emerged into the immense blackness of Memorial Field an hour and a half later, I had more new angles to think about than the average alumnus would ever dream of. I was pretty thoroughly convinced, moreover, that all this talk about a wonder team is downright fantastic.
"Of course we are optimistic about the coming season," Coach Blaik had asserted, "but our optimism is a sane optimism. This talk about an undefeated team is foolish, and it isn't fair to the boys playing football here. The coaches have team morale to think about as much as anything else, and extravagant ideas in the heads of students and alumni can do a lot of harm."
Harry Ellinger, the Indians' popular line coach, voiced his agreement from the corner where he was critically examining some plays he had just diagramed; and Joe Donchess, silent member of the new Green staff, nodded his approval over the back of the chair which he was straddling at a precarious angle. Ellinger and Donchess live in the Field House during the gridiron season, while Blaik and Andy Gustafson, backfield expert of the staff, have taken Hanover residences with their families.
Coach Blaik's expression "sane optimism" seemed particularly apt, and it is as good a description of the atmosphere in the Dartmouth gridiron camp as one can invent. An immense amount of work looms ahead, and the Green squad is for the most part woefully inexperienced; but Hanover has rarely seen such a fit, hard-working crew, and enthusiasm runs pretty high.
"I am perfectly satisfied with the way things are going," Coach Blaik confided, "but installing a new system is no simple matter. There are no Houdini methods; it takes time, work and material, backed by excellent morale. Spring practice has certainly been our only lifesaver, and the fellows who missed it will need several weeks to catch up with the rest of the squad."
No Past for Green Coaches
I ventured a question about the comparative merits of the football material at Dartmouth and Army and was promptly told to forget all about the Army. "And the same goes for Pittsburgh," the new Green coach added. "Harry and Gus and Joe and I all belong to Dartmouth now, and our past connections don't enter into the job at hand."
Dartmouth's present crop of football players, it seems to be Earl Blaik's opinion, leaves quite a bit to be desired. The heavy reliance this year on sophomores is an abnormal state of affairs. The first team of a varsity squad should be made up of experienced seniors and juniors, the Green coach be- lieves, with juniors and sophomores filling the relief roles. Occasionally a sophomore will crash the sacred precincts of the first team, but a half dozen on any starting team is very rare.
"Only four positions on our first team may be filled by what we consider experienced men," Coach Blaik declared; and opposite the line-up which he had just drawn on the blackboard he checked off two ends, one tackle and one back. "The rest are sophomores or men who played very little last year." Somehow or other the drawing made his words emphatic, and as Earl Blaik stood at the blackboard, peering through glasses and gesticulating with a piece of chalk, he looked more like a professor than a football coach.
"We have culled the Dartmouth squad for football players," Blaik went on, "and we feel that the fifty-two men invited back for early practice are the best material we have available. We have talked to each individual candidate and studied his record, and I don't think we have missed many tricks. Of course, any candidate outside of the chosen fiftytwo will be given every opportunity in the world to make the varsity. Our scrimmages with the junior varsity later on will help us a lot to get a line on new men."
Junior Varsity an Experiment
The junior varsity squad, in charge of Pat Holbrook '20, will report on September 20, the opening day of College. About 138 men were out for spring practice, but just how many of the eighty-odd"uninvited" candidates like football well enough to report for the junior varsity remains to be seen. The whole business is in the nature of an experiment, Coach Blaik admits, and if there isn't enough interest among Dartmouth students to warrant the continuation of the junior varsity idea, it will be dropped. A game with the Harvard Jay-Vees has been arranged for this fall, and efforts are being made to schedule one or two lesser games. Most of the action by the junior varsity men, however, will be had in scrimmages against the varsity; and there is no telling what unheralded back or lineman might catch Coach Blaik's keen eye in these sessions. Having been considerably sobered in my estimation of the Big Green material, I next put forward that foolish question: "What do you think of this year's schedule?"
Staff NOT Pointing for Yale
"Let me tell you, to begin with, that we are not pointing for the Yale game or any other one game," Coach Blaik almost barked. "We have a whole schedule to play and we are going to play it. And what happens in one game isn't going to have any effect on what we do in the remaining games. Dartmouth's schedule is tough enough, but naturally it doesn't begin to compare with the schedules taken on by some of the country's teams. We are going to take everything in stride, and, as I have said before, we are out primarily to win football games. Mild mention of the Yale "jinx" almost started an uproar. "That is one thing I never want to hear around here," Earl Blaik said emphatically.* "There is no such thing, and it is silly to scare yourselves to death the way you do every year. The Yale game can be won in the same way that any other game can be won: by playing winning football. And when we get to the Yale Bowl, it will be with the one idea of winning." At this point, Ellinger had to work off his disgust for the "jinx" notion by stalking back and forth across the coaches' room. "You can't tell me that Yale can't be beaten the same as any other team," he declared; and that seemed to be that.
A squelched exponent of jinxes, I looked shamefacedly off to the side; and I noticed filing cases and all the paraphernalia of a well-ordered office. As if guessing my thoughts, Coach Blaik pulled out the folder of an individual player, another containing data on one of Dartmouth's major opponents, and an amazingly comprehensive booklet which the Dartmouth scouts will fill out this fall—tangible evidence of the ground covered by the Green coaches since last spring. A new conception of the football coach as an executive as well as a field general began to dawn upon me. "Oh, there are a thousand and one things to look after," Blaik said calmly. "After the next two weeks we can omit night work until the scout reports begin to come in."
Blaik a Glutton for Work
The Green coach has refused to delegate even his correspondence to other hands, and with boundless energy and a mind keen for detail, he has given himself completely to the job of being Dartmouth football coach. "How about correspondence with alumni?" he was asked. "We've already had a good bit," he replied, "and every letter is answered. That goes without saying. I expect that correspondence will keep growing as the season progresses. A winning team will bring us a lot of letters from Dartmouth men—and a losing team will bring us a lot more!"
The Blaik regime might almost be called "scientific," if there were any meaning left in that overworked word. Things run on schedule, and a daily program is mapped out in advance and printed for the benefit of all hands concerned. The schedule which I picked up from the table was typical of early season practice:
"Morning Session: 9:30-9:4s—Rules; 9:45-9:55 Calisthenics; 9:55-10:05—Charging Machine; 10:05-10:15—Tackling; 10:15-10:40—Group Work: Backs —Ends on tackles, Line on offensive work; 10:40-11:00—Group Work: Backs—Skeleton drill, Line-Ends and Tackles pulling, Guards pulling; 11:00-11:15—Kick formation under pressure, Point after touchdown under pressure; 11:15-11:30—Punters.
"Afternoon Session: 3:00-3:10—Calisthenics; 3:10-3:30—Pass Plays, Line protection and covering 3:30-4:oo—Backs on pass defense, Line and Ends on defense; 4:00-4:10—Blackboard plays; 4:10-s:oo—Trial plays, after warming up as team units; First vs. Third, Second vs. Fourth; 5:00-5:10—Signals, wind sprints and in. Punters remain out."
Making a schedule is one thing and sticking to it another, but under the Green coaches things run off with clocklike precision. The general impression, both indoors and out, is one of exact system, but based upon an intelligent and human groundwork that breeds devotion.
"Sane optimism" is indeed the touchstone to the whole Dartmouth setup. Hard, systematic work by day, and sane optimism for the anticipation which inevitably follows when the day's work is done. The outcome of Dartmouth's 1934 season is a matter for some doubt, but a smart, well-drilled team is a certainty. All hands are happy, and after talking with Earl Blaik and watching him work with a squad, one knows just how they got that way.
Earl Blaik and Captain Jack Hill greet the new season with cheerful countenances.
Coach Donchess in a watchful pose (left) and Green Squad Heading for First Drill.
Coach Blaik Handling Skull Drill on Chase Field (left) and Harry Ellinger and Pat Holbrook DirectingWork on the Scrimmage Machine.
Harry Hillman, veteran trainer, does his first repairjob on the heel of Chet Young, junior end candidate.Harry, the dean of all Dartmouth coaches, has takencare of Green football teams for more than 15 seasons,and remains on the job as regimes come and go.
"Rip" Heneage watches intently fromthe sidelines.
Andy Gustafson tells the backs how itis done.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of monthly interviewswith Earl Blaik which the MAGAZINE will publish during the football season. Alumni readers are invited to send in questions whichwill be placed before Coach Blaik for the following month's installment.
* We are saying good-bye to the "jinx." It now heads the list ofwords tabooed in this publication.—EDlTOR.
