St Edwards University - Tower Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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Ohhh Vince! Say it ain't so! Striking their own blow for jock’s lib, a group of very liberated females wins the girls’ football title. 96 Tes always been a source of solace in defeat for frustrated athletes that “nice guys finish last.” While Muhammed Ali was heavyweight champ, it was still Floyd Patterson whom the people loved, and while the slick Yankees won every pennant in sight, New Yorkers still loved their Bums from Brooklyn. But now the Mets have won a pennant, Lee Trevino a million dollars, John Wooden an entire decade, and, yes, the Sorry Excuse has won the girls’ 1972 intramural football championship. The Sorry Excuse? Indeed, the disrespectfully precocious, irre- presibly mischievous Sorry Excuse. The ideal sports story should now detail how, after successive early season losses to the rival Lime Crush and Yur Gang, the Excuse put it together in the clutch to win their last six in a row. Sort of “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That would be ideal except that it isn’t true. Excuse coach Kevin O’Connor’s dramatic, post- game, closed-door address to his athletes after the Yur Gang defeat went something like, “Well, you played the best you could; I’m really proud of you. When’s our next game?” It wasn’t Vince Lombardi speaking. And clutch performance? The biggest chal- lenge the Excuse faced in its two rematches with another irrepresible crew, Yur Gang, was seeing which team could have more fun. It’s just biologi- cally impossible to choke up while laughing. Exaggeration? Perhaps a little, but it serves to emphasize the key ingredient that won a championship for maybe only the second or third most talented club in the league. The Sorry Excuse had in fact negoti- ated a very formidable uphill climb after Yur Gang, having been upset by the Circus, neverthe- less retained first place by edging the Excuse on penetrations in a scoreless thriller in the season’: third week. The Circus and Goober Snatchers were” to provide no more upsets, and so the title race became a round robin affair between the Excuse, Yur Gang, and Lime Crush.

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The Magic Co. was relieved to just be in the playoffs, but the Tuf-Nuts had dead aim on the Zoo, and their 30-17 pasting of the Magic Co. showed it. Burns completed better than 50% of his passes as six different Tuf-Nuts scored. Turk barely completed a third of his passes, and only drove for the Company’s second touchdown on the last play of the game. The preliminaries disposed of, the Tuf- Nuts readied at last for the only game of the year. It was a matchup to delight any purist. Kenny Garcia helmed the second best offense in the SEFL and Pete Ademski called the shots for the loop’s premier defense. When Garcia grew tired of throwing to Tom McCloskey and Tim MacCollum, there were Mike Cates or Mike Antonini for screens. When Ademski wasn’t blitzing, Joe Kelly was applying the pressure of three men and Mare Stead was playing his own brand of zone defense that looked like man-to- man. What it all added up to was a statis- tician’s delight and a bettor’s nightmare— the first offense against the first defense while the Nuts had the ball, and the second offense against the second defense when the Zoo had it. True to sports tradition defense won the ballgame as Mare Stead killed two deep threats and Jesse Fowlkes another with in- terceptions in the end zone. Stead’s first theft was perhaps the most important for it followed Rodney Tieken’s theft of Garcia’s first pass to set the Tuf-Nuts up for an early lead. In fact, the Nuts stole three of Garcia’s first four passes, yet they were not able to seize the initiative. The half ended 6-6, and some of the starch was gone from the Tuf- Nuts. If one play broke their backs it was a weirdie early in the second half. Garcia hit his safety valve Jose Cabesas over the middle for 17 yards, when Cabesas then lateraled to Tom McCloskey who stepped down the side- line 35 more yards to complete a 52 yard TD strike. The Nuts looked desperately for flags or a whistle indicating a tag, but there were none, and the dam broke shortly. Cates squeezed a 17 yard TD strike and Cabesas a 9 yarder, and the Zoo had completed their perfect season. For the first time in three years the headlines would speak, not of the upset winner, but simply of the champion. DS

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Mary Fleming, top, of Lime Crush led all scorers in 1972 with 56 points. Annette Edwards, next page, right, of Sorry Excuse followed with 48, and Yur Gang’s Bobbie Morales, opposite page, was third with 42 points. In the second round the Excuse shut out Yur Gang again 7-0 and squeezed by Lime Crush 8-6, while Lime Crush beat Yur Gang, to climb into the lead by one game. But their capacity for clutch per- formance had barely been tested, it turned out, in light of the remarkable test still ahead. At 7-3 Yur Gang still trailed Sorry Excuse (at 8-2) by one game, with two remaining for each club. A loss would eliminate Yur Gang, but a victory would virtually clinch at least a tie for first. All three contenders would then have three losses, and while Yur Gang’s last game was with the winless Goober Snatchers, either the Sorry Excuse or Lime Crush would be eliminated in their head-to-head showdown the last day of the season. Yur Gang struck quickly in the first half while coach O’Connor and quarter- back Annette Edwards were among the missing for the Excuse. The Excuse twice halted Gang drives, but Mary Fowler finally hit Mary Brady on fourth down for the Gang’s first touchdown. Rosie Garza squeezed the two point conversion and the Gang was winging. On the en- suing series Fowler intercepted one of Kathy Kelly’s floaters and sped 25 yards for a second score. When Bobbie Morales grabbed a tipped pass for another two point conversion, the rout was on. Coach and quarterback were on hand for the Excuse at the start of the second half, but Fowler fashioned a superb seventy yard drive that consumed fully six minutes. However the Excuse slithered off the ropes and stopped the Gang on downs, preserving what little hope they had left. Edwards finally got her offense moving several series later, hitting five straight passes before center Sylvia Poncik snuck open in the end zone to put the Excuse on the scoreboard at last with two and a half minutes left, but when the conversion failed Yur Gang was still very much in command 16-6 in the gathering twilight. However, Yur Gang inexplicably failed to run out the clock and gave the ball back on a short punt. From the 25 Edwards hit Nancy Neuman for ten yards, and then Chris Jackson was interferred with in the end zone, setting up a one yard lob to Kathy Phillipp for another touchdown. The conver- sion brought the Excuse within 16-14 with under two minutes left. Still Yur Gang failed to take advantage of the clock as two clock-stopping passes fell incomplete. But a search for Mary Fowler’s lost contact lens consumed some very valua- ble time nonetheless as twilight faded into darkness. A third down pass fell incomplete when play resumed and Yur Gang had to give the ball back again with thirty seconds left. Annette Edwards launched a prayer into the darkness and it settled in Kathy Kelly’s arms in the back corner of the end zone, and stunningly, impossibly, Yur Gang was counted out by a punch it hadn’t even seen. Lime Crush remained, but what chance did mere athletes have against the winners of the Fiesta Bowl? The Crush completely dominated the first half, but could only wrest a penetration lead for its efforts, and when Annette Edwards raced thirty yards to score with an errant Crush pass, the Excuse snapped out of the trance that lingered from their miracle with Yur Gang. They began to move the ball at will, but the Lime Crush would not be put away. Jeanne Frank inter- cepted Edwards in the end zone, and twice Peggy Kucera, Eileen Walsh, and Mary Fleming sparked goaline stands to keep the Crush alive. However, with Walsh limited to one second half completion in 14 attempts by the rush of Debbie Saucerman and Sherry Smith, Edwards’ 30 yard gallup through the Crush secondary for a second score finally settled the issue. Of course it would now be ideal to re- port O’Connor’s post game remarks about Camelot and how fortunate he felt to win. Naturally he admitted instead, “We de- serve it!” Vince Lombardi might even let slip a grin at that. O7