CORNELL 20, DARTMOUTH 13
As thousands of old and young Dartmouths and a valiant handful of Cornells shivered under blankets in a brisk snow storm, the boys from far above Cayuga's waters managed to outlast a fighting Green team to win by one touchdown. In the 28 games played since the start of the series in 1900, Dartmouth had heretofore won and Cornell 13, with one contest ending in a tie. With this victory, engineered on a slippery field and marred by frequent fumbles, the Big Red drew up even with the Green, with 14 wins apiece. This game was fun to watch, although the spectators maintained an almost uniformly moody silence throughout the proceedings, interrupted only by a spasmodic and half-frozen yelp as somebody did something exciting. Probably the weather.
The week before the game, the Davis Field House had been rife with dismal rumors about the health of the Dartmouth aggregation, which made it somewhat doubtful if the Green would be able to field eleven reasonably sound men at game time. It actually did not turn out as bad as that, but the local boys were immeasurably handicapped by the illness of Meryll Frost and Carl McKinnon, cocaptains of the Dartmouth aggregation. The absence of Frost was particularly devastating, for he has proved what spark the team has had this fall (admittedly not very much); Johnny Costello substituted capably in the master's shoes, but we all missed the gallant Frost. Some of the other members of the team had reputedly risen from beds of pain to give their all for Dartmouth; one wag indeed swore that he saw Trainer Eddie Zanfrini taking the boys' temperatures in the huddles.
The game started out in fine style for the Green, with Dartmouth playing the role ordinarily reserved for the opposition this unhappy fall—namely, freezing on to the other fellow's fumbles and capitalizing thereon. Before all the customers were well settled in their seats (many of them understandably put off as long as possible the venture into the blizzard), Dartmouth had recovered a Cornell fumble on the latter's 20-yard line. Big Francis O'Brien celebrated the first of his many lunges at the Red line by almost making a first down. This was followed by a quarter- back sneak by Costello to the Cornell three, from where O'Brien battered his way over for a score. In the attempted conversion, Cornell obligingly gave us three successive opportunities to make the kick, all of which were singularly unsuccessful. At this juncture, however, it looked as though the Big Green, after so many false starts this fall, had finally begun to roll. A mere one point seemed negligible.
But then Cornell took, matters into its own hands. On their own 35-yard line (from which vantage point no team this year except the Army has any business thinking of scoring) the Big Red team suddenly shook their sensational freshman halfback Chollet loose for a 65-yard scamper toward the Dartmouth .goal line. Joe Sullivan came out of limbo with a desperate diving tackle which caught the fleet Chollet from behind, just two yards short of the promised land. Cornell was not to be denied, however, and a couple of plays later punched over a TD but handsomely failed to convert. We were then just where we started.
Cornell scored soon after, following a failure to get off a fourth down punt by Charlie Holt. The latter could not be blamed for his inability to do anything about a bad pass from the usually reliable Alexander at center. Cornell took over and finally smashed over for what looked to be a somewhat dubious touchdown. On fourth down, they hit the line for the remaining yard or so to go to the goal line, the venture being defined as unsuccessful by several officials and successful by others. Finally, however, the touch- down was awarded to Cornell, who was apparently just as surprised (but far more pleased) than the Dartmouth team. At the half, Cornell was therefore in front 13-6.
Cornell scored their final touchdown on a beautiful pass by Dekdebrun, their talented quarterback, to the übiquitous Mr. Chollet. The latter has come all the way from New Orleans to Ithaca this fall to enjoy the superior educational opportunities offered far above you know what. The Green was, however, still very much in the ball game. In the most exciting single play of the game (from the Dartmouth standpoint) Bob Albrecht received the final kick-off and returned it 55 yards to the Cornell 30, almost getting away completely in the process. With Joe Sullivan carrying the ball on some nice off-tackle slants, Dartmouth worked the pigskin down to the Cornell 6-yard line where, with 47 seconds left to play, Sullivan crossed the goal line standing up. There was just time for Albrecht to kick the goal, for Dartmouth to kick off, and for Cornell to sit on the ball a couple of times. In this case, the Old Guard died, but it definitely did not surrender.
In addition to Sullivan, O'Brien, and Albrecht, some neat work was done by Young Conrad Pensavalle, an Everett boy who just entered as a civilian freshman following a long stretch in the Navy. This boy is one of the fanciest passers seen in these parts in recent years and a scat-back of no mean ability. Bob Harvey played his customary 60 minutes at tackle where, if memory serves, he has played practically the full time every game this fall. And so another milestone in a dismal season is passed, with Columbia the only remaining game. We plan to squeeze in a flash on that one before we go to press. [Editor's note: And here it is. Columbia 21, Dartmouth o.]
A TOUCHDOWN IN THE HANOVER SNOW. Francis O'Brien, Big Green fullback, goes over from the 5-yard line in the first period of the Cornell game. Hillary Chollet, Cornell back, is getting a ride across the line while Bob Harvey (74) and Jack Costello (21) watch their teammate open the scoring in the game.
