FOOTBALL SQUAD "WELL ALONG"

Coach Blaik Gives Credit to Spring PracticeFor Ten-Day Jump on Last Fall

IF YOU ARE a devotee of the fine art of saving time, the current handiwork of the Dartmouth football coaches will warm your heart. The Big Green squad is a good ten days ahead of last fall's schedule of preparation, and the answer lies not only in a highly successful spring practice but also in an all-summer check on things that brought the players back to Hanover in excellent physical condition—and with their new football shoes already broken in.

The shoes were sent to squad members three weeks before practice started, so that the usual early-season blisters could be dispensed with. This might seem like a minor detail to some, but it is a strking indication of the way in which Earl Blaik and his aides have cleared the decks for action from the very start this fall.

"We are well along for this time o£ the season," Coach Blaik told the MAGAZINE'S crew of interviewers just one week after fall practice had started. "We are picking up where we left off in spring practice, and it is only because of the ground covered then that the squad has been able to jump right into real work. We haven't had to bother so much with fundamentals, for one thing. Our blocking and tackling isn't up, by any means, but that will improve as we go along."

Coach Blaik's remark about blocking and tackling immediately brought to mind the warning he had given the squad that very afternoon. "It doesn't make any difference how fast you can run or how accurately you can throw a forward pass," he had told his men, "you can't make this man's team unless you block and tackle." At the same time, he made some succinct remarks about injuries. "If you block and tackle half- heartedly and take a vacation," he said, "you're going to get hurt. If you just stick out an arm or a leg instead of blocking hard with your body, you're going to get banged up. You'll also find that the other fellow won't come at you so hard the second time if he knows that you are really hitting with everything you've got."

Dartmouth's head coach doesn't hide the fact that he is pleased with the way his men trained during the summer months and reported to him in superb physical condition. To this fact as much as to the gains made in spring practice he attributes the rapid progress being made down on Memorial Field. "The squad really wants to play football," he declares. "Almost without exception, every man out for the team this year is out there because he likes the game. The sophomores especially have a lot of bite in everything they do, and we're going to get some good ball players from that group. It's only a matter of time and experience."

There isn't much difference be- tween this year's material and that of last season, in the estimation of Coach Blaik. "On the whole, it just about evens up," he says. "We're much better off, however, in that the players know the system now and are more experienced, while the coaches know what the men are capable of."

The Big Green squad harbors a number of greatly improved players, and in this category Earl Blaik definitely places Jack Kenny, Dartmouth's quarterback captain. The Green coach has great respect for his leadership as well as his playing ability, and the sum and substance of the glowing tribute which Coach Blaik made before the MAGAZINE interviewers seemed to be that a better football captain doesn't exist. Kenny, who learned his football in Yale's backyard in Hartford, has taken the fortunes of the 1935 eleven to heart and is a driving force in every practice session. He is being ably assisted by Carl Ray, Dave Camerer and Henry Whitaker, whose "chatter" is ear-splitting when they are all at it at once.

The best "talker-upper" on Memorial Field, how- ever, is Roland Bevan, the new football trainer. He has taken mental as well as physical condition for his province, and during the early training period he has been boon companion as well as stern monitor to the boys on the squad. Eating with the players and living with them in their special quarters in Topliff Hall, he has had a lot to do with team morale. In the estimation of the varsity coaches, "Roland is worth his weight in gold."

The rubbing-room of Davis Field House at night is more eloquent than words in describing the bond that has already grown up between the squad and the diminutive but exceedingly well-muscled trainer. There perfectly sound players gather to listen to Trainer Bevan's stories and repartee while he is busy bandaging and kneading out the knocks of the day. The evening gathering has been dubbed "Bevan's Seminar" and attendance is consistently good.

No Exponent of Coddling

Dartmouth's new trainer is no exponent of coddling, and his conditioning program can be as strenuous as his comments are funny. When the squad returned to Hanover it found two of Trainer Bevan's "ideas" rigged up and waiting. One, consisting of a bench and foot brace, has been designed to strengthen stomach muscles, and the other, a series of chinning bars on which the players lower and raise themselves backwards, has been devised to build up shoulders and arms.

The fundamental principle of Trainer Bevan's "system" is, in his own words, "to prevent injuries rather than to cure them, and in the inevitable event of injuries, to make haste slowly before the injured player is allowed to return to hard contact work."

Injuries contracted in pre-college days are still dogging a number of players, Dartmouth's new trainer has found. "Those who have serious injuries of this sort," he says, "have all had their cases thoroughly studied, and preventive methods have been used. Others whose injuries are more or less mental we try to make forget them, so that they won't favor imaginary ailments and lay themselves open to real injury by hitting softer and later than the other fellow."

Gridiron Coach as Well as Trainer

With 18 years of football coaching behind him, Trainer Bevan knows full well the importance of physical condition in the gridiron game. He turned out some of the best scholastic teams in the mid-west while at Woodward High School in Toledo, Steel High School in Dayton, and Rayen High School in Youngstown, and for the success he had he gives full credit to his belief that "A successful athlete is a well-trained athlete, and the most important factor in successful athletics is physical condition."

Trainer Bevan has a man-sized job ahead of him to keep the Big Green eleven in trim for one of the longest and toughest schedules in the East this year. Dartmouth's football directorate likes the stiff competition, however, and will be even more pleased with the 1936 schedule which adds Holy Cross to the present list of six major opponents. "This year's schedule places a premium on good reserves," Coach Blaik stated in the interview, "and except for one or two positions, such as the ends and center, it is going to be mighty hard to raise them. We've got to fill up the tackle slots some- how, and the backs are really too light for a schedule as hard as ours. There are some promising sophomores, of course, but I've never seen a good sophomore player unless he was an All-American to start with."

A question about the style of play this season brought out the fact that Dartmouth should have a better rounded attack and, at the same time, a more open one. The lack of a good passer last fall shackled the Green running attack, which was nevertheless a highly respectable one, and this year the certainty of an improved aerial game should open things up more for the Green ball-carriers. "We are trying some experiments with laterals too this fall, and they may help us to offset our weakness in the backfxeld," Coach Blaik declared. Dartmouth's gridiron director is not exactly fond of what he calls "customer plays" and still believes that offensive frills are valuable primarily in enhancing a sound running game. As a matter of fact, Coach Blaik believes that the appetite for rugged football is disappearing among the players themselves and that the modern tendency toward a more open game is an adjustment made necessary by the softening of young men of college age.

The liberalizing of the lateral rule this season will open up the offense and please the spectator, Dartmouth's head coach believes, but he also sees the danger of a chaotic state of affairs that will complete the cycle and start the pendulum back toward the game as it has been played in past years. "But if everybody is going in for laterals, we might as well," he adds, "and perhaps they will be our salvation."

The Indian gridmen haven't done a great deal with the sidewise tosses as yet, and probably won't until the preliminary training period is over. Coach Blaik figures that that period will end with the Norwich game, and until then—and certainly long after then—the prevailing cry on Memorial Field will be "Block and Tackle!"

Trainer Bevan (left) and two of his conditioning devices. John Matzinger, end, is on the bar, while the trio strengthening their stomach muscles includes Eddie Casey, John Armour and Captain Jack Kenny.

The Big Green eleven runs off a play with the aid of the scrimmage machine, and in the adjoining picture Captain Jack Kenny and Coach Blaik are shown talking things over.