FRESHMAN FOOTBALL
It will be good news to Old Greens that this is the best freshman team since before the war—1940, to be exact. That was the season the 1944 freshmen were operating for the first and last time as a unit, forming during those ante-bellum days the greatest freshman team your correspondent (and a lot of coaches) have ever seen. This fall's 1951 aggregation is neither as big nor as deep as their famed 1944 predecessors, but they have had a very successful season with (to date) only one defeat. What is more, they should send up half a dozen or so outstanding performers to the varsity next fall where, it need hardly be added, they can use them. The freshmen have soundly defeated Harvard, Boston College, and Yale and lost to Boston University by a narrow margin. As we go to press, they still have the final game with the Black Knights (junior grade) of West Point, but win, lose, or draw this will be the best freshman season for seven long years.
The most promising operatives among the yearlings are backs, although a couple of linemen may come through for the varsity before they have left the Hanover plain. Appropriately enough, the leading performer is also the captain, in the person of strapping John Clayton, who stands something over 6 feet and weighs just under 200 pounds. As a T formation quarterback, he can do everything he should, with his passing an especially brilliant attribute. Right behind him and for all practical purposes of equal talent is Bob McCraney, an 185 pounder who comes from West High School in Minneapolis, which nurtured such erstwhile Green stalwarts as Bob Krieger, Don Norton, and Harry Gerber. McCraney is a hard runner and as good a passer as Clayton, so the varsity should inherit two good quarterbacks next fall.
Best of the halfbacks is a speedster named Bob Tyler, who is not very big (165 pounds) but is faster than any halfback to wear the Green in some years. Tyler has led the team in scoring and has broken away for long runs in every game to date (including one lethal scrimmage between the freshman and the varsity held before the Cornell game in which several varsity operatives were laid low). The other halfback is a sturdy youngster named Isbey from Grosse Pointe, Michigan and whose 185 pounds have covered a good deal of ground for the Little Green. Fullback on the first aggregation is a stocky character named Manganelli, who weighs slightly under 200 and hits like a Sherman tank. Young Mike Choukas has also done well in the backfield this fall.
Other backs may come to light later, plus several linemen whom Coach Art Young has been grooming, but this gives you a rough (and, we trust, not too rosy) preview of the shape of things to come. Your correspondent (to say nothing of the coaches) is very hesitant about going out on a limb about freshmen, but we thought you might be interested in this ray of gridiron sunshine.
CROSS-COUNTRY LEADERS: Coach Ellie Noyes and Captain Stan Waterman '46 of New York City, who took third place in the Nonagonals.
