COAST GUARD 19-DARTMOUTH 0
The Great White Cold began to walk abroad on this bleak November afternoon and divert some of its early season blasts at a few thousand chilled spectators huddling under blankets in Memorial Field. To this dismal autumnal accompaniment, Dartmouth wrote another chapter in a football season which needs only Cornell and Columbia (at this writing) to bring it to a conclusion. The Coast Guard game followed the pattern set early in the fall and followed with dispiriting regularity ever since—namely, occasional (and very occasional) flashes of offensive power which bogged down at crucial moments, and some fairly sustained defensive virtuosity which is, however, seldom sufficient to hold the opposition to the extremely low score necessary to tie, let alone win.
For most of the first half, Dartmouth was able to give the congealing spectators an occasional psychic lift by threatening to score several times, on one occasion working the ball down to the ten-yard line. Something went wrong, or failed to go right, and an aroused Coast Guard line (composed, incidentally, of gigantic operatives; or maybe the other fellow's team always looks larger than yours and hence renders their form of mayhem against your own gallant band particularly reprehensible) rose up and tossed our boys back toward their own goal line. Some fast secondguessing on the part of the grandstand quarterbacks later pointed out that this was clearly the place to unleash that aerial attack, since we were manifestly unable to do anything through the line. But the passing attack was not forthcoming at that juncture, and it was the nearest we came to scoring all afternoon.
For the sixth consecutive game, Dartmouth was forced to operate with a novel combination of backfield performers, who had practiced as a unit only a few times and played together as such not at all. Hal Clayton at fullback is apparently out for the season with an injured knee, and his place was taken by Swanson, who had recently transferred from Bucknell. Ed Gingrich, starting his first game at right halfback after spending the first part of the season recuperating from virus pneumonia, provided a touch of color in an otherwise exceedingly drab afternoon by his splendid punting. Don Evans, a sturdy little character who had been unable to play the first part of the season because of his recent arrival in the unit, started at left halfback and tossed a number of impressive looking forward passes in the second half which nobody, unfortunately, was able to catch with any regularity. Britt Lewis at quarter was the only familiar figure in the starting backfield. "Smiley" Braatz, fresh from his sterling performance in the Yale game, was inserted at numerous intervals throughout the first half. He managed to bring the crowd to its feet on a number of occasions with sweeps around the end which almost, but never quite, broke into the clear. But that was about all there was to the Dartmouth offensive.
Although it is quite probable that this Dartmouth audience is even less interested in reading about Coast Guard's three touchdowns than the majority of the spectators were in seeing them, nevertheless this conscientious reporter must chronicle that the first score came about 35 seconds before the end of the first half on a long and prayerful heave caught on the goal line by one of the Coast Guard ends. The other two touchdowns resulted from the spirited collaboration of a former Brown halfback named Tommy Dorsey and an erstwhile Yale freshman flash named Stan Weiner.
One of the few pleasant aspects of the afternoon's developments as far as the Dartmouth spectators were concerned occurred not in Memorial Field but in the Polo Grounds, where Notre Dame was absorbing an awe-inspiring beating from the Army, to the tune of 59-0. This was just five points short of the dreadful indignity the Fighting Irish imposed upon Dartmouth a few short weeks ago. Strictly speaking, Dartmouth opinion on the Army-Notre Dame game was probably mixed, ranging from a sadistic glee at the exploits of the avenging Army backs to a masochistic melancholy at the thought of just how bad all this makes us look. Your correspondent was in good journalistic company when he remarked, in all good faith, after the Dartmouth-Notre Dame game that we were beaten by the currently best amateur team in the country. Without losing one jot or tittle of its amateur standing, however, Army beat Notre Dame as badly as Notre Dame beat us. But it is high time that we leave such bootless brooding behind. For that way madness lies.
THE DARTMOUTH CUP has been presented by the Dartmouth College Athletic Council as a new trophy for the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League. Dartmouth, which has gained permanent possession of the last two cups, put up by Columbia and Pennsylvania, has one leg on the new trophy. Paul Sample '2l designed the Dartmouth Row etching.
