John Adams High School - Clipper Yearbook (Ozone Park, NY)

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He's got something up his sleeve, I sez to myself. :'Listen, Joe says to Marty, knock the sass out of that wise guy and make a good job. Marty smiles pleasantly and when this Mack Stella comes out, the ice is cleared. He handles the stick as if he knows his business. i'Daroux, hollers joe at the goalie. Git down there and let's see what this kid kin do. Daroux is a cagey, grizzled half-breed who has been in the business nearly ten years. Stella's supposed to pass Marty and score a goal on Daroux, a man-sized task for any veteran. They toss him a puck and he starts toward Daroux at full speed. Marty barges in on him and as the kid feints to the left, Marty trips on his stick and goes sprawling on his face. Mack crosses to the right and slams the disc hard at Daroux. The goal-keeper sets himself for an easy save, but the puck takes a crazy hop and bounces over his shoulder into the net, for one of the Hukiest goals l've ever seen. Marty picks himself up and is mad as a wet hen. Daroux is kinda sore, too. The kid skates back, chesty-like. What a lucky guy, I mutters to joe. Yeah, says joe, but he's watching this Stella guy's form intently. Try it agin, you men, he shouts. So the blond-haired kid takes the puck again and starts circling Marty, cau- tious-like. But Marty is real mad, and he charges the kid like a bull. He lands a beauty of a body-block on Stella, and he goes up in the air, feet first. Daroux sees Marty bump the kid and turns away, grinning. How- ever, Stella happens to swing his stick by instinct as he leaves the ice and it hits the puck by a lucky break. The puck dribbles down the ice past the unwitting Daroux and just about plops into the strands. Boy, that's the limit of luck! The kid gets up as confident and unshaken as ever and skates over to joe with a How's that, boss? joe glares at him in nine languages and tells him to beat it-until the same time tomorrow. He leaves the place, and I tells Joe that I think the kid's lucky. But joe seems to think the kid has got the goods and wants to hang on to him. In fact, for the first time in four years, joe cracks a smile. The boy must have something, I figures. ak ar as The gang has already nicknamed him Cocky because of his self-con- fidence. That's putting it mildly. He's one of these self-made men, who wor- ships his creator. Well, the night of the opening game rolls around, and Cocky acts like his nickname. It was one of the tlukiest games I ever did see in a long while. We won, by 1-O, but there's more than that to it. The kid played the first period well enough, but joe takes him out in the second for a rest. He sticks him in again in the last period, and the score is tied at 0-0. Cocky gets the puck behind our goal and starts

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RABBIT FOOT by LEOHAMALIAN HEY raved about the luck of Larry Kelly last year. He was supposed to be Dame Fortune's favorite kid. He was ballyhooed as the luckiest guy on hind legs in sports. But you should have known Cocky Stella, the guy who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. Lucky? Why, this Kelly guy was a chump next to him. Confident? He wasn't nicknamed Cocky for nothing. The guy 'was so sure of himself on a hockey rink that he carried the puck without even looking at it once, from the time he got his stick behind it until he scored or lost the rubber. Not even once. And good? Sometimes that was the trouble. He was good and he knew it. It was through his swell playing that the,Spartans were such a nifty team that year. But weistarted to talk about luck. It was his doggoned luck and my alert playing, mine, I said mind you, that robbed me of a juicy cut of front-page write-ups. It was during the last game when the score was . . . but wait a minute! I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll go back and start from the very beginning. The new hockey season was opening and we were hunting a good forward. We'd for five years. Me, I've in- Quebec, around for needed one been playing defense for nearly seven years with the Spartans and since we lost Sacnon, five years ago, the team was getting worse each year. ' Wfell, anyhow, a week before the season starts, we're drilling in the rink, getting into shape for the curtain- raiser. I skates over to joe Leblanc for a while and starts chewing the fat with him. joe, he's our manager and a good one at that. I'm good friends with him, and these little chats are common occurrences. We're gabbing about the schedule we have to face when a big, blond kid hops over the fence in front of the seats and comes walking toward us as if he owned the place. joe's first impulse is to rush him out on his ear, but there is something in his manner that makes joe resist. Maybe it was his six foot and some. But instead he barks belligerently, What d'ye want here? Come on, make it snappy. The kid says his name is Mack Stella, and he'd like to try out for the team, because he thinks he's good enough and that the Spartans ain't so hot, even if they are pro's. joe turns red and nearly swallows his cigar. Oh, yeah? he wheezes. The kid Oh yeahs in return and joe is getting madder by the minute at this fresh kid. Wfith a funny look in his eyes, he tells the kid to put a pair of skates on the hurry up. The young- ster beats it for the lockers and Joe calls Marty, our ace defenseman. over.

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l down the ice. He passes one to me, and I pass it back at the mid-stripe. I-Ie goes down a little and sets for a shot. There's a Tiger wing right in front of him, but that don't bother Mack. He lets it go and it sails right by that Tiger's head toward the goal. The Tiger goalie's got a blank look on his face. His own man gets in his way, and he can't see the puck. It hits the net for the only point of the game. Whatta lucky break for us! Thatis some way to win an opening game. We gets a two-day vacation and then we faces the Yellow jackets, the weakest team in the league. I play sorta bad in the last quarter, letting a jacket wing get past me, and the result is a 2-1 win for the jackets. The kid doesn't do much this game. But his luck can't be stopped long. Our next game is with the Hawks, last year's champs. For two periods, we battle them guys dizzy, and it's only by the bad breaks that the score is 0-0. The game is nearing the end, and we can't do anything. So it goes into an overtime. We hold off the Hawks for a while, and then Mack Stella traps the puck. He carries it up a way and nearly sur- prises rne with a pass when he isn't even looking at me. I snares it and shoots it to Watt, who relays it to Stella. Stella spins and bullets the rubber at the Hawk goal. The goalie makes a one-handed stab at it and grabs it with a prayer on his lips, be:ause that was a real hot shot. I-Ie sees a Hawk man in the clear and he hurriedly goes to toss him the puck. In his anxiety to relay the puck to him, he lets it slip through the back of his mitts and it bounces on the ice. He turns around to grab it quick-like but his eyes widen with horror, for the puck is rolling toward the net. He dives for it but he is too late. The puck rolls in for a point. Naturally, the only guy they can credit with the goal is Stella. Boy, if that isn't luck, I'rn a monkey's uncle. D'ye think that would happen with us? I'll say not. Anyhow, we staves off the Hawks and wins the game. bk 514 FF Throughout the season, we play good enough to keep us near the top of the heap. Strange, but it seems there's no end to Cocky Stella's luck. Not that he isn't a good player, for he really is one of the season's finds. But he keeps scoring fluke goals, avoid- ing penalties when he trips men so that everyone but the ref sees it. There's one game in particular, when Mack clips a guy from behind, and the ref misses it. It was the Comet game. A Comet walks up to the ref and asks, Hey, where's your dog? The ref says, puzzled-like, What dog?,' The Comet man answers, You're the first blind man I ever saw without a dog. He got two minutes for that, and Stella got away scot-free . . . All this time, joe goes around with that I told you look on his face. But as the season began to draw to a close,