Clifton High School - Rotunda Yearbook (Clifton, NJ)

Page 19 text:

way through practices and scrimmages and a veritable army of recruits. He had made a place for himself on the third team two years in a row. One thing he didn't know, however, and that was that when the final out was made in his first season, the assistant coach had said to that Almighty Personage, Don Wilson, the Head Coach: What about that Johnson lad, Don? And Wilson had replied: I don't know about him. He's too light, but that kid's a fighter, gr football player if I've ever seen one! He nodded. We'll let him play. What johnny would have given to have heard that! Well, this was another year and his hopes were high. He might even play in the Woodclili game, but he didn't dare let himself hope for that. As he trotted out onto the field that day in a pair of borrowed football shoes and his trousers rolled almost to the knee, he found practice about to start. Coach Wilson was out already in spotless white ducks, which, although he always demonstrated his points, stayed miraculously clean. Another season was under way! And again johnny fought and struggled and worked mightily. Two weeks before the opening game he had made a place for himself-on the third team. Terry Ackerman, in his sophomore year, had been told by three doctors that he could never play football. His heart, they said, was weak, a condition which could only be remedied by rest. And so he rested. The next year the same doctors told him that for some inexplicable reason his heart was better and that he might even play football if he took it easy. He was remembering that season as he ran through signals in his posi- tion at left end on the first team. Even as they drove against a non-existant opposing team in a three play right, he shuddered at the thought of how he had played through that season happy in the thought that his heart was all right, and how in the Thanksgiving Day game with W'oodcliff he had caught a pass, run sixty yards for a touchdown, and then crumpled into a heap. A heart attack, the doctors had called it. And now after those endless days in bed he had once again been pronounced sound, but still, every time he pulled a long forward out of the blue, he thought of that horrible sinking sensation and that blackness, and an awful fear tugged at something down inside. People wondered why he some- times dropped passes or hesitated too long after he had them. But now it was the eve of the Woodcliff game and he had to forget, he HAD to forget-THAT GAME MUST BE WON. And yet Buck Serrini, the massive left tackle, who was running listlessly through the plays next to Terry, didn't care especially whether they won. or not. He didn't like this crazy game anyway. It was all nonsense to him. He certainly would not be playing except for the fact that deep down inside him he knew that during his first two years in high school his fellow students had jeered at him behind is back and thought him yellow becausehhe pre- ferred Algebra and Biology to football. It was all because of his size, for 'rhe REFLE-cToR 15

Page 18 text:

Defeat By H al Reid T WAS one of those sparkling, early, September days, the trees were still green and shafts of pale yellow sunlight angled through their branches to cast myriad purple-gray shadows on the ground. It seemed somehow like the beginning of a new year instead of the beginning of the end of the old. At least that's how it seemed to Little johnny johnson. His real name was Hungerford P. johnson, jr., but Johnny was a lot easier. At any rate, johnny had been training religiously for three months, and his rather undersized body was as hard as taught steel cable. Football practice had begun and all was well except that johnny's 134 pounds of brawn and muscle somehow had failed to make him the football player he so badly wanted to be. Still, this was another season, with another chance to knock Old Man Jinx down to his size and step on him. Yes, there had been other seasons for johnny, two, in fact, and he had held down the bench from beginning to end. johnny was a senior now, but he could still remember the first time he had gone out for the team when he was a Freshman. He remembered that first day with its conditioning exercises that started out so innocently, and Hnally stabbed his soft muscles through with red hot pokes. He remembered his first gruelling week, and then, his Waterloo-blocking practice. The recruits had divided up in threes, two blockers and a defense man. It was all very simple: one took his stance opposite the two blockers, and when the assistant coach shouted, Hip! , the two men hit you shoulder to shoulder and drove with their legs, while all you had to do was get between them and crash through. Johnny was on defense. It looked simple enough. He had seen practice sessions like this ever since he had been able to walk to a football field, for johnny, you see, loved the game. So he tried to imitate the stance he had seen his heroes use. He set himself and waited- Hip! The next thing he knew he was flat on his back about three yards from where he had started. He tried it again. And again he tried until his body was blotched in spots with ugly blue-black markings and the pains in his shoulders wouldn't let him lift his arms. Not once did he get between them and crash through. He had walked home that night with the hot tears rolling slowly down his face, and the next day he had been cut from the squad. Yes, he remembered all that, and he thought, too, of how he had exercised and run and studied, and practiced, and of how he had fought his The REFLE-cron - - - I- :1 T 14

Page 20 text:

Buck, you see, had been brought up on a farm and was six feet two and as wide as he was long. He hadn't been actually sure what the students thought until that time he left his coat in the gym locker room and had gone back for it only tlq fglpd that someone had put a wide stripe down the back of it with yellow c a . That season he had gone out for football and made the second team. This was his last year, and he had made first string tackle, but, although it took two good men to move him and he opened ponderous holes in the line, there was something missing. That all important thing-fight! II. In the growing dusk they trotted off the field, sweating from their laps , those hated circuits of the field which inevitably come at the end of a hard workout when your muscles ache and your joints seem to creak. They dove into the steam-filled locker room. Forty wild animals pulled each other's jerseys off over shoulder-pads, linesman shoulder-pads raised high by secondary straps underneath and with air spaces between, backfield pads, flat and light. Heavy, cleated shoes were thrown crashing into steel lockers. Varsity men pulled off pants with elastic stripes on the legs. Substitutes pulled off much-patched and adhesive-taped pants. Student managers took great delight in ripping tape off weak ankles and wrists, for much hair came off too, and the accompanying howls were very gratifying. The inexperienced left their towels in their lockers and came back from the shower rooms dripping water and questionable language as they found that their towels had already been used by four or five other players who had forgotten theirs, and who also, to go by the evidence of the towel, had for- gotten to take off all the grime in the shower room. The general bedlam was augmented by a flury of towels being snapped at the players returning from their shower, much to the delight of the snappers and the discomfort of the snapped-at. Buck Serrini secretly loved all this tomfoolery but somehow he was not accepted by the rest of the squad. They sensed his dislike of the game as a whole and unconsciously resented it. He sat there on the bench before thc lockers in the midst of the fun and yet not part of it. He pulled on his socks slowl . Y Terry Ackerman always managed to be the last one out of the showers and this night was no exception. He was immediately descended upon by a howling Dervisher in the forrn of Bop Starrett. Now Bop was a lunging, line-plunging fullback, with arms about as beefy as Little johnny's legs, an asset which made him a foe to be respected, especially while snapping a wet towel. Terry dove for the first opening in sight, which happened to be the door leading to the lower hall. Immediately he realized his mistake, for the door was quickly slammed and locked behind him, leaving him in a rather drafty corridor in an extremely The REFLECTOR -2:-1' 16