home. I was only seventeen years of
age and weighed 217 pounds.
Former Adjutant General William Verbeck--then Colonel Verbeck--was Head
Master. Before I was fairly settled in my room, the Colonel had drafted
me as a candidate for the football team. I wanted to try for the team,
and was as eager to make it as he evidently was to have me make it. But
I did not have any football togs, and the supply at the school did not
contain any large enough.
So I had to have some built for me. The day they arrived, much to my
disappointment, I found the trousers were made of white canvas. Their
newness was appalling and I pictured myself in them with feelings of
dismay. I robbed them of their whiteness that night by mopping up a lot
of mud with them behind the gymnasium. When they had dried--by
morning--they looked like a pair of real football trousers.
George Redington of Yale was our football coach. He was full of
contagious fire. Redington seemed interested in me and gave me much
individual coaching. Colonel Verbeck matched him in love of the game. He
not only believed in athletics, but he played at end on the second team,
and it was pretty difficult for the boys to get the best of him. They
made an unusual effort to put the Colonel out of the plays, but, try as
hard as they might, he generally came out on top. The result was a
decided increase in the spirit of the game.
We had one of the best preparatory school teams in that locality, but
owing to our distance from the larger preparatory schools, we were
forced to play Syracuse, Hobart, Hamilton, Rochester, Colgate, and
Cazenovia Seminary--all of whom we defeated. We also played against the
Syracuse Athletic Association, whose team was composed of
professional athletes as well as former college players. Bert Hanson,
who had been a great center at Yale, was one of this team.
[Illustration:
H. Wallis Coxe Cochran Nessler Heffelfinger W. Winter Mills
Sanford Hartwell Morrison Graves Stillman
McCormick McClung L. T. Bliss
C. Bliss Hinkey Barbour T. Dyer
OLD YALE HEROES--LEE McCLUNG'S TEAM]
Recalling the men who played on our St. John's team, I am confident that
if all of them had gone to college, most of them would have made the
Varsity. In fact, some did.
It was decided that I should go to Lawrenceville School, en route to
Princeton. It was on the trip from Trenton to Lawrenceville, in the big
stage coach loaded with boys, I got my
|