Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/31

1913] crescent was burst in two, and through the opening leaped the indomitable Bray, followed by two other Lafayette men, Knight and Chalmers. With machine precision, Pennsylvania’s secondary defenders closed in, but Kennedy went down before Knight and Davidson was blocked off by Chalmers. As all four went to the ground, Bray leaped forward into a clear field save only Woodley, a swift, low, hard tackler. This clean-cut player, seeing the grave danger, came up the field on a curving course so as to intercept Bray near the side-line, a safe forty yards from Pennsylvania’s goal-line. The spectators, who were sitting dumfounded by the swift kaleidoscope of sensations, now saw that the bold assault of Bray would come to naught, as he was caught between the side-line and the ferocious Woodley. As the men approached, they saw Woodley crouch to spring, when suddenly, as though from nowhere, Chalmers’s great bulk flashed across the path of Bray and struck the springing Woodley with the full force of its 180 pounds. Down went the little warrior Woodley with Chalmers upon him, while Bray leaped past them, and in ten strides was across the goal-line.

Such a performance as this would have been sufficient to sate the throng who saw it, but fortune was lavish that afternoon, and other sensational plays followed. Here was the lighter, less skilful but immensely spirited eleven six points in the lead, with substantially the whole game still to be played. Fiercely, indeed, did that Pennsylvania eleven of giants assail that little Lafayette team. Time and again did the great guards Hare and McCracken, in Pennsylvania’s most famous mechanism of attack, “guards back,” batter Lafayette backward line upon line, only to be piled into a pyramid of red and blue jerseys in the last space, and the ball taken from them. Thus the battle waged and thus the battle closed, Lafayette safeguarding to the last the touch-down which Bray had won.

Again two years were destined to come and go before another warrior of the gridiron would achieve a full-field run from kick-off, and then, only two days apart, two brilliant instances of the play occurred. In the west, November 28, 1901, E. B. Cochems, of Wisconsin, in a game against Chicago, caught the ball from kick-off on his ten-yard line, and dashed and dodged, plunged and writhed through all opponents for a touch-down. Two days later, Charles D. Daly, of the Army, famous previously as a player and captain at Harvard, caught the Navy’s kick-off, also on his ten-yard line, and sprinted an even hundred yards for a touch-down.

Cochem’s run came near the end of the game, when his eleven had victory well in hand. Daly achieved his performance at the opening of the second half, dramatically breaking a tie that had closed the first period of play. Cochem’s great flight presented all of the features of speed, skill, and chance which must combine to make possible the full-field run. Like his predecessors, he boldly laid his course against the very center of Chicago’s on-coming forwards, bursting their central bastion, and then cleverly sprinting and dodging through the secondary defenders.

Daly’s famous dash presents the only instance of a full-field run from kick-off being achieved by skirting the flanks of the enemy. Not only was this run made along the outside, instead of through the center, but it was so successfully executed that not a single hand, comrade’s or opponent’s, was laid upon Daly from the beginning to the end of his flight.

The first half had closed with a score of 5 to 5 Daly having kicked a goal from the field for the Army, and Nichols having scored a touch-down for the Navy, the try for goal being missed. After an intermission tense with expectancy and excitement, the elevens deployed upon the field. Navy kicked off. The kick was low, but possessed power and shot straight down to Daly on his ten-yard line. The Army instantly charged toward the center of the Navy’s running crescent, forming, as they ran, the familiar hollow wedge for Daly to enter. But this alert-minded player, by one of those sudden decisions to vary an established rule of action which in real warfare has won many a brilliant victory, sharply turned to the right, abandoning the protecting wings of the wedge, and started with incredible swiftness on a wide, circling dash around the Navy’s left flank. The Navy forwards checked their charge and ran to the left to force Daly out of bounds, but the latter, outrunning and outracing all, flashed by the pack, and, clinging close to the side-line, dashed down the field and across the goal-line.

Fortune with curious regularity now permitted another period of two years to elapse before the occurrence of another full-field run from kick-off. This time it was a Carlisle Indian who covered the long distance, in a game against Harvard, October 31, 1903, and did so by the craftiest, wiliest stratagem ever perpetrated by a redskin upon his pale-faced brother. The first half had closed with the Indians in the lead five points to none. Harvard opened the battle by sending a long kick to Johnson on Carlisle’s five-yard line. The Indians quickly ran back to meet Johnson, and formed a compact mass around him. Vol. XLI.—3.