HOLY CROSS 13, DARTMOUTH 6
The Crusaders came down like the proverbial wolf on the fold, their cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold, and preceded by one of the most colossal build-ups New England football has ever seen. This current aggregation at Holy Cross was rumored to be the greatest team ever to come out of Worcester; the backfield was alleged to be on speaking terms, if not a couple of noses in front of, the famed Four Horsemen; and their captain and left halfback, Stan Koslowski was reputed to be on a par with the great Galloping Ghost himself (whose immortal number 77 Koslowski, with characteristic modesty, appropriated for himself this year). In short, the local boys were presumably not fit to be on the same field with the janizaries of the "soft-spoken" Crusader coach, John (Ox) Da Grossa.
Unfortunately for Dartmouth, our team had read the papers and apparently went on the field with the same conscious or unconscious apprehension with which Hanover High School would approach a scrimmage with the Green Bay Packers. After they recovered from their initial attack of the jitters, a process which took the whole first quarter, the boys in Green proceeded to push the wonder boys from Worcester all over the field. Dartmouth spotted Holy Cross two touchdowns in the second period and from then on dominated the afternoon in every respect but the score, managing to push over a touchdown near the.close of the first half and spending the second half pounding up and down the field without being quite able to hit pay dirt. The net result of the afternoon which, from the Dartmouth point of view was an epic of frustration, was that Holy Cross squeaked through to a slightly dubious victory through a combination of Dartmouth stage fright, strategic blunders, fumbles, and penalties. Moral victories, unfortunately, do not appear in the record books.
The game opened on a uniformly dismal note for the Big Green. The big Purple team took the ball on the initial kickoff and methodically began to grind out the yardage in the general direction of the Dartmouth goal. Koslowski carried the ball on off-tackle slants practically every time and, while the blond speedster would be a welcome addition to anybody's backfield, he did not exactly look like a second Red Grange. Just when it looked like a slow but sure rout for the heavily outweighed Green, the latter stiffened and took the ball on downs on the 25-yard line. The crisis seemed over. The first Dartmouth play was marked by a fumble, which Holy Cross recovered. This was followed by several more sequences, at the end of which Dartmouth again did the seemingly impossible and held for downs. Dartmouth took the ball again and againfumbled on the first play. It was too much to expect that the impossible could be negotiated a third time and on this occasion Holy Cross finally punched their first touchdown across. These maneuvers used up the first quarter and part of the second; during the first quarter Dartmouth had their hands on the ball exactly twice and both times fumbled. This gives you a rough idea of the implication of the above remarks about the boys having read the papers.
Shortly after the beginning of the second quarter, a Dartmouth punt was blocked in mid-field and recovered by Holy Cross, one of whose cohorts romped to the 20-yard line with the ball. Kissell, the Holy Cross fullback, and Koslowski alternated in carrying the ball across the goal line for the second touchdown. The kick was wide, but at that point it did not look particularly important, inasmuch as Holy Cross was apparently out to win by at least 40 points.
But Coach McLaughry's boys had other ideas. Coming back with a surge, on a combination of running plays by Albrecht and Frost, cunningly mingled with passes, the Green scored toward the close of the half on a jump pass over the goal line from Frost to right end Al Gould. This play came from the 5-yard line, where a pass from Albrecht to left end George Rusch had been the major factor in advancing the ball. As the half ended, the Dartmouth team had tasted blood and had finally convinced themselves—the hard way—that the highly touted enemy had collective feet of clay and that the highpowered Koslowski was (on that afternoon at least) just another fellow in a purple shirt.
The second half was almost completely dominated by Dartmouth, which ran up a total of seven first downs in that period alone but was unable to translate them into the score sheet. Penalties always appear particularly devastating to the hopes of your side and correspondingly inconsequential to the opposition, but the series of official reverses the Green underwent in this period seemed especially fatal to their scoring chances. Time and again runs of ao or 30 yards and passes of similar dimensions were called back because of various infringements of the rule book. In all fairness, it should also be pointed out that we did not do our cause much good in certain crucial instances by the ball-handling. Several potential scoring chances were nullified by fumbles, which were greedily snatched up by an alert and powerful Holy Cross team.
The outstanding player on the field was Meryll Frost, who quarter-backed with skill, ran back punts like a streak, did a good part of the passing and most of the punting, besides hurling his slender 160 pounds against the mastodonic Holy Cross ball carriers time after time. Bob Albrecht played an excellent game at halfback, where he shared running and passing honors with Frost. Big Bob Harvey played his customary 60 minutes at right tackle, where he was the only man on the Dartmouth team physically on equal terms with the huge Holy Cross players. Co-Captain Carl McKinnon played his heart out at guard, where he also stayed for the full distance. All games are hard to lose, but this one seemed particularly dismal in view of the long Dartmouth climb out of the slough of uncertainty during the first and second periods and their absolute dominance of the proceedings after that.
ONLY A SHORT TRIP FOR HOLY CROSS STAR. Stan Koslowski, rounding Dartmouth's left end in the period of the season's opener at Hanover, was stopped by Fritz Alexander, Green center, shown eluding blocker Veto Kissell. Meryll Frost is coming up at the right. Also shown are end Clayt Birdsall (86) and guard Jim Biggie (60).
