A Day by the Radio
IT was a few minutes before one o'clock on Saturday, October 17, and it was a perfect day for football. Junior quarterback Rick Stafford should have been going through his pre-game warm-up drills on the turf of Harvard Stadium. He should have been the frequent focus of some 25,000 pairs of eyes as he enjoyed one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Stafford should have been the starting quarterback in the annual Ivy League fray against Harvard, The Game for the Dartmouth football team.
Instead, Stafford lay in a tiny, private, end-of-the-corridor room on the fourth floor of Hanover's Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, 130 miles north of Cambridge. The only eyes on him were those of his mother, up from Somerset, Massachusetts, and those of a reporter who dropped in unannounced. The highlight for Stafford on this day would be his pending transfer to Dick's House, where he hoped to listen to the Harvard game on a small portable radio. Stafford set aside the paperback book he was reading and turned down the radio. "It's not that bad now the pain has left," he said, pulling his 6-foot 4-inch, 215-pound frame up by means of a metal triangle hanging in front of him. A cast on Stafford's right leg stretched to his toes. It had been placed there after surgeons had repaired cartilage and ligaments scrambled when a William and Mary defender's shoulder pads smashed into the 20- year-old's knee.
Stafford had quarterbacked the Big Green to a 32-13 victory over Princeton in the season opener, but then the three-year victory drought against non-Ivy League foes continued. First, it was the University of Massachusetts. The Minutemen edged the Green, 10-8, at Amherst. Then Holy Cross came to Hanover and blanked Dartmouth, 28-0. Against William and Mary, Dartmouth had taken a 7-6 lead late in the first half on a slick 12-play, 82-yard touchdown drive. In the third quarter, Stafford's confidence was building as he directed the Dartmouth offense into William and Mary territory; then his injury occurred. "I finally got it going when it happened," said Stafford. Dartmouth would score no more that day and lost to the Virginians, 12-7, when the visitors scored on a 54-yard, fourth-period run.
Stafford faces eight weeks in the cast. "It's the biggest cast I've ever seen in my life," the engineering major noted. Then there will be another cast, which will allow some knee flexibility, for a few more weeks. That will be followed by a brace and then workouts to regain strength in the knee. There will be no more football or hockey this year for Stafford, who captained both sports in 1978 when he was a student at Somerset High School. "It will be a tough road," he said of his rehabilitation, but he also vowed to try to play football next year. "Definitely. That's something to keep me going." Harvard' was still on his mind. "I was going to try to get down for the game," said Stafford. "I was going to have my mother drive me down in a station wagon. But I couldn't even walk to the bathroom, so I said let's forget it. I hope we kill them."
At Harvard Stadium, another Dartmouth quarterback moved into the spotlight once reserved for Stafford. Enter Frank Polsinello, a 6-foot, 175-pound signal-caller from Mechanicville, New York. Polsinello, only a sophomore, had been the starting quarterback for the 1980 Pea Green squad and was listed as the number four quarterback on the depth chart when this season began. He moved up quickly, however, and was Dartmouth's main back-up when Stafford was injured. He drew the starting assignment against Harvard the first sophomore quarterback to start for Dartmouth since Steve Stetson '73 did it 11 years ago.
Three Polsinello passes fell into Harvard hands in the first half, and the Crimson capitalized on two of the interceptions to build a quick 10-0 lead. Six of his first-half passes were on target, however, and the Big Green came marching back. Tom Bruno, a sophomore running back, scored from inches out to narrow the Crimson lead to 10-7, and then junior running back Sean Maher put Dartmouth ahead with a 27-yard scamper. Maher scored again on a three-yarder in the second half, and senior Tim Geibel closed the scoring with a 27-yard field goal. The 24-10 victory was Dartmouth's third straight over Harvard and gave the Green a 2-0 mark in the Ivy League. Young Polsinello completed all three of his passes in the second half and overall completed 9 of 13 for 114 yards. Rick Stafford heard it all on the radio.
Joints: Stafford departing; Bakemeier andHalverstadt observing from the sideline.
Joints: Stafford departing; Bakemeier andHalverstadt observing from the sideline.
