With the Big Green Teams

808 BLACKMAN feels it's a normal situation when, during the nights in mid-August before Dartmouth's football team returns for pre-season practice, he lies awake into the early hours of the morning nervously anticipating the next three months.

"I've reached a point, after 20 years as a college coach, where I expect to spend some sleepless nights before the season begins," said Blackman two days before the mid-October encounter with Brown. "What has me concerned is that until last Saturday, after we had beaten Penn, I never had the problem of getting to sleep on a Saturday night," said the man whose forces had demolished Penn, 41-0.

"That night, though, I don't think I slept an hour. The same thought kept going through my mind as I stared at the ceiling: Did all this really happen?"

"All this" certainly did happen. It happened with such overwhelming reality that the Ivy League, New England, and the East were suddenly faced with a plain fact that had been submerged for the preceding three weeks.

The fact is that Dartmouth has a very good football team this fall. After four games in which it has scored 148 points and allowed 19, it is almost frightening to think how good it is or how good it might ultimately be if it remains free of injury and sustains the momentum it appears to be generating.

For one who arrived at Dartmouth in 1968 as sports publicist and got the feeling he was bad luck, the opportunity to put words together to tell of this team is indeed reassuring. In fact, it's a temptation to get a bit carried away with a good thing.

It was generally accepted that Dartmouth would be an improved team over last year's array that stuttered to a 4-5 record. The consensus was, however, that the Indians wouldn't be alone in the quest for the title that has come to Hanover exclusively or on a shared basis five times since the League began. Penn, Harvard, and Princeton were all rated as imposing forces at the season's outset. There was, and still is, much substance to a claim by each for merit as an Ivy title contender. Not to be discounted, either, is Yale which in the early stages of play has apparently made a successful conversion from awesome power to fleet versatility.

But our subject is the Dartmouth team and it's a topic that has captured the imagination of football fanatics, both of a Green hue and otherwise.

There is nothing quite so indelibly scored into the minds of Blackman's seasoned charges as the memory of last year's record. It takes recollection all the way back to 1955 to find another losing record. It also takes little to rankle this team little more than a passing reference to some long afternoons spent at the Yale Bowl and Franklin Field not too long ago.

"We know we have a good team this fall," said Ernie Babcock, the 6-5, 225 pound co-captain from Milton, Mass., who is operating at the left end of the defensive line this fall. "We have a number of players who are more disappointed than anyone with last year's record and want to prove that we have a very good team."

As this is written on the eve of the trek to Harvard Stadium, Babcock and John Ritchie, the offensive tackle and co-captain from Long Beach, Calif., find themselves the leaders of a devastating pack that has flattened all who have crossed its path so far.

Before pursuing with details, here's a quick recap of what has transpired since September 13. It shows that last year's misery is being well salved.

Blackman figured he had respectable depth on the squad (it turns out he's right) so he pitted his first offense and defense against the second units in the annual Green and White intrasquad game on September 13. Result: The first unit scored eight touchdowns with breathtaking ease and held the seconds to naught.

"We honestly didn't expect such a mismatch," said Blackman. Maybe so, but he shed no tears as he watched the Green turn on a display of scoring power that had been dormant for two years.

★ Boston College and former Blackman aide Joe Yukica came to Hanover for a pre-season scrimmage game. The Eagles were regarded as a potential challenger to Penn State as the class of the East. The fact that Dartmouth dismantled the vaunted Eagles with five pass interceptions and four fumble recoveries en route to a 42-6 bombardment still didn't do much for Dartmouth's stock in the eyes of the experts (?).

"Look at the statistics," said the BC devotees. "BC was stronger overall than Dartmouth."

"Look at the score," said the Dartmouth partisans. It would be another three weeks before the skeptics became believers.

The season opened at the University of New Hampshire. Dartmouth won, 31-0, from a team coached by another former Blackman assistant, Jim Root. It was no secret that UNH, the defending Yankee Conference co-champion, had been pointing to end Dartmouth's domination of the intrastate series. The success of the season rode on the game for the Wildcats.

"Well, UNH has made a good comeback and has a good team but they're really not in Dartmouth's league," said the wags. "We'll see how good Dartmouth is against some of the tougher competition."

* The home season opened against Holy Cross and again the Indians' 38-6 bombardment was tainted.

A day after the game came the announcement that some isolated cases of hepatitis on the Holy Cross squad were, in reality, the first signs of an epidemic that struck the entire Crusader squad and coaches and caused a cancellation of the remaining games on the Crusader schedule.

"It wasn't a fair test," was the outcry. "Holy Cross was playing with a team weakened by illness."

No matter what happened, there was always something to cast an outstanding Dartmouth performance in a questionable light.

Enter Pennsylvania and the Ivy opener before 17,000 onlookers at Memorial Field. The date was October 11 and it was the day that people came to believe that Dartmouth was for real.

When the smoke had cleared, the Indians had won, 41-0, from a team that was considered every bit their equal. In the process, Dartmouth piled up more rushing yardage than Penn had permitted any foe in 48 years-509 yards that stands as an Ivy League record. The Green also equalled the Ivy record for total yards gained (614).

"They must be for real" was the murmur as the pundits elevated the Indians to the No.1 spot in the New England major college poll.

The first of four successive traveling engagements to Providence, Cambridge, New Haven, and New York found the Green collecting a 38-13 triumph over Brown for their fourth straight victory.

"Well, that matches the 1968 total," said backfield coach Charlie Harding, later in the dressing room. "I think it's safe to say that we'll get the fifth before it's all over." (Charlie always has been somewhat conservative.)

The tantalizing thing about writing this article is that we're faced with the problem of sifting through so many outstanding individual performances in addition to the generally superlative play of the entire squad. Where does one start?

The best place, perhaps, is with the news of the misfortune which has befallen Clark Beier, the fine senior halfback from Brookfleld, Wis., who opened the season by rushing for 143 yards against New Hampshire, including a dashing 53-yard run for Dartmouth's first touchdown against the Wildcats.

The week before in the Boston College scrimmage, Clark had demonstrated his game-breaking ability by racing 64 yards with the second half kickoff to set up the touchdown that put Dartmouth ahead, 35-6, minutes later.

The victory over Holy Cross was costly, however, as Beier suffered a badly dislocated right elbow while trying to break his fall as he was tackled following a six-yard gain in the opening minutes of play.

"It was a tough loss for the team but my real sympathy is for Clark," said Blackman. "There's no question he was on his way to a great season and would have been a strong candidate for All-Ivy honors.

"It's such a frustrating thing for an outstanding young man like Clark to work so hard all through high school and three years of college and then, in his final year when he's all ready to be rewarded with great achievements, to be struck down by an injury," said Blackman.

Beier became the talk of the Dartmouth attack last year when he succeeded Bob Mlakar who also had the misfortune to break his leg against Holy Cross. He went on to become the Green's top rusher in 1968 and, with the return of Mlakar this fall, the halfback tandem seemed destined for great things.

While Beier's injury was a great disappointment, it was Dartmouth's good fortune to have a very capable successor standing by. John Short, a junior from Glendale, Ariz., who was the leading rusher on the 1967 freshman team and saw limited service last fall, stepped into the breach and quickly made his mark.

Before the Holy Cross game was done, Short had carried the ball 13 times for 80 yards and two touchdowns.

A week later against Penn, Short scored on a 12-yard run and then used Beier's "game-breaker" tactics by spurting 51 yards on the second play of the third period for the touchdown that put Dartmouth ahead, 28-0, and left the Quakers gasping for relief.

Against Brown, Short wrote finis to the outcome in the opening 13 seconds as he took the kickoff and shot straight up the middle for 97 yards and a touchdown.

Short is hardly alone in performing marvelous feats in the Dartmouth backfield. Pick a name - quarterback Jim Chasey (of whom Blackman uttered, "All I can say is that I'm glad he's on our side"), Mlakar, sophomore fullback Stu Simms, the fine addition from Baltimore who came into his own with a great day against Penn, or Tom Quinn, Mlakar's backup at right halfback who romped 83 yards for a touchdown against Brown.

All of them have been superb, but Chasey is probably the key to it all.

The junior from Los Gatos, Calif., spent most of preseason practice battling senior Bill Koenig for the starting assignment. He won the job on the basis of his performance in the GreenWhite game and against Boston College. Through four games he had completed 25 of 41 passes for 361 yards and three touchdowns.

"Jim is proving to be a master at turning a broken play into a production," said Blackman. "He has outstanding peripheral vision that enables him to pick up potential receivers or know when he has to forget the pass and run with the ball."

A 71-yard run on an abortive pass play is typical of Chasey's ability as an innovator. He did that against Penn, and in the Brown game he chose to flip a flat pass toward a mass of white shirts rather than waste an incompletion out of bounds. One of those shirts belonged to Mlakar who took the pass and was convoyed down the sideline behind the blocking of Ritchie and center Mark Stevenson on a 24-yard touchdown play.

Mlakar, a serious question mark in pre-season due to his bad leg, has gradually regained the confidence that makes him so dangerous. The halfback from Cleveland scored three times against Brown and trails only Short in the rushing department while leading the receivers after four games.

Simms, a halfback as a freshman, has shown great blocking ability and against Penn gained 84 yards rushing and another 47 on two pass receptions.

"I can't recall a player who has absorbed so much information or who has phased into our complicated offense as quickly and as effectively as Stu," said Blackman.

The backs get the glory but the great success of the offense is the result of fine line play. Ritchie demonstrated the efficiency of Dartmouth's offensive line against Penn as he completed his assignment - usually against Mike Chwastyk, an All-Ivy defensive tackle in 1968 - on 56 of 58 plays.

You just can't say enough about the work of Ritchie and Bob Peters at tackle, guards Dave Mills and Bob Cordy, and Jack Wimsatt, and Stevenson at center in executing their blocks.

While we've been concentrating on the offense, it's only fair to say that the defense has been equally imposing.

"There isn't a more exciting player than Murry Bowden," said Blackman of the 190-pound rover back from Snyder, Tex. With the strength of a linebacker and the speed of a defensive back-—plus the reckless abandon that has ignited the entire defense - Bowden is easily the key to the defense's success.

Because of a summer shoulder injury, Bowden was a very questionable performer this fall but has turned out to be all that the Dartmouth coaches had expected. He doesn't tackle with his arms —he simply runs through people.

The biggest surprise on defense has been 235-pound tackle Barry Brink from Mill Valley, Calif. Brink was a jayvee tackle as a sophomore but has taken such a hold of his position that he could rank as the league's top performer before the season is over.

In four games, the Indians have intercepted six passes and recoverd five fumbles. The secondary—halfbacks Joe and Russ Adams, and Jack Roberts, the senior safety who plays with such reliability that no one remembers the last time he erred - has been a primary weapon.

The names of the individual standouts seem to be endless — on either side of the line. Tom Price, the junior defensive end, is giving Babcock a tremendous amount of pressure for the starting nod and has really developed into an outstanding defender. He made three key tackles in succession at Brown to quell a Bruin uprising.

Or Rick Lease, the middle guard who is in his third season as defensive signal caller. The rugged senior from Ohio was pushed by sophomore Wayne Young from Tarrytown, N.Y., for his position early in the season but has responded to produce some of his best efforts against Penn and Holy Cross.

And then there is Tom Quinn, the senior halfback who would be starting almost anywhere else in the League. As he came off the field following his long touchdown run against Brown, his comment was, "I guess it makes all those miles of windsprints worth while."

The man who appears fated to spend his senior year in an auxiliary role is quarterback Bill Koenig. A starter for two years, either alternating with Gene Ryzewicz in 1967 or Chasey in 1968, Koenig is the target for much of Blackman's praise.

"It's tough for a young man to spend his final year of play behind someone else," said Blackman. "I'm tremendously proud of the way Bill has reacted because he continues to be one of the hardest working men on the field."

The performance of both the offense and defense is clearly illustrated in the national major college statistics. After four weeks, the Indians were first in the nation in rushing offense, fourth in total offense, first in pass defense, fourth in total defense, and second in defense against scoring. Not bad.

"They all get tougher the rest of the way," said Blackman as he prepared his team for Harvard. "What gives me confidence, however, is that these players have such tremendous pride in them selves.

"After the Brown game, for example, when we had won by 25 points and appeared to have played well, the players and coaches knew that it wasn't as well-balanced a performance as had been produced against Penn. We scored early and often and then lost our edge emotionally."

Perhaps the greatest characteristic of this team is that it resembles the great teams of 1962 and 1965 in being extremely "loose." It doesn't get tense on the eve of a game. There are no peaks and valleys in the emotional approach to each game.

It's as though they're saying to Blackman, "Don't worry, Coach. We know what has to be done and we'll be ready to do it."

Junior halfback John Short (29), Dartmouth's leading ground gainer through fourgames, is shown on his way for long yardage against Holy Cross in Hanover.

Coach Bob Blackman has enjoyed a lotof good watching so far this season.

Pete Donovan creating a new Dart-mouth career record for scoring bykicking (82 points) when he made hissth extra point good in the Pennsylvania game.

Eric Potter, sophomore cross-countrystar from Clinton, N.Y., has finishedfirst in his first three races this falland holds the Hanover course record.