1933

Since it has been ordained that this should be an athletic issue, your correspondent turns in memory to the playing surfaces of long ago and recalls some of the exploits of the men of 1933 as they cavorted competitively in the third decade of the century. In football one remembers Ward Donner's blocked punt in the 1931 Yale game, which made the famous 33-33 tie possible. In basketball, also against Yale in 1932, there was Hal Mackey's court-long, last minute toss which won the game for the Big Green. In track against Harvard we saw cal Milans soaring well over his own height in the high jump. In the fall, largely unaccustomed as he was to outdoor pursuits, one could have viewed Gus Babson leading the harriers up hill and over dale in cross country. Then, in the colder season, our intercollegiate champions Dick Goldthwait, down hiller extraordinaire, and Lym Wakefield, team captain and fancy skater par excellence, led our winter sports team to its win in the 1933 Quebec intercollegiates. And while we are discussing championships, we must recall the water polo team, sparked by the formidable trio of Pierson, Rugen, and Sprague, which won the Eastern Intercollegiate title. And, moving to non-varsity champs, let us not forget the winning Smith Hall baseball team (with their hats, cheer, and alma mater), galvanized by BillSherman and Nick Xanthaky.

Dartmouth did not have a championship baseball team during our stay in Hanover, but affairs on the diamond were enlivened enormously by our classmates, Lopey Rich, captain Tom Maskilieson, and BusterSnow, the irrepressible.

A fellow traveler with this group was JayWeidenhamer, in more recent years a Florida M.D. and currently a dedicated writer. Fittingly for this issue, he has just completed a piece on that football bane of our student days, the "Yale Jinx," and has allowed us to see the paper and to summarize it. He has taken the Dartmouth-vs-Yale losing habit back to 1884 and that 113-0 lambasting, has described the Longnecker pass in 1929, the Albie Booth-Bill McCall duel, and the Morton placekicks in the 33-33 tie in 1931, the anguishing intervening losses, and finally, the triumphant, surprisingly modest 1935 14-6 win. "Enduring the 'jinx,''' Weedie says (perhaps a trifle inaccurately), "was fun, but full of unpleasant memories and melodrama."

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