Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

GRUELLING FOOTBALL PRACTICE

A shrill whistle sounded over the field where almost two dozen sturdily built boys in their middle 'teens, clad in an astonishing array of old and new football togs, had been struggling furiously.

Instantly the commotion ceased as if by magic at this intimation from the coach, who also acted in practice as referee and umpire combined, that the ball was to be considered "dead."

Some of those who helped to make the pack seemed a bit slow about relieving the one underneath of their weight, for a half-muffled voice oozed out of the disintegrating mass:

"Get off my back, some of you fellows, won't you? What d'ye take me for—a land tortoise?"

Laughing and joking, the remaining ingredients of the pyramid continued to divorce themselves from the heap that at one time had appeared to consist principally of innumerable arms and legs.

Last of all a long-legged boy with a lean, but good-natured face, now streaked with perspiration and dirt, struggled to his feet, and began to feel his lower extremities sympathetically, as though the terrific strain had centered mostly upon that particular part of his anatomy.

But under his arm he still held pugnaciously to the pigskin oval ball. The coach, a rather heavy-set man who limped a little, now came hurrying up. Joe Hooker had once upon a time been quite a noted college athlete until an accident put him "out of the running," as he always explained it.

He worked in one of Chester's big mills, and when a revolution in outdoor sports swept over the hitherto sleepy manufacturing town, Joe Hooker gladly consented to assume the congenial task of acting as coach to the youngsters, being versed in all the intricacies of gilt- edged baseball and football.

It had been very much owing to his excellent work as a severe drill- master that Chester, during the season recently passed, had been able actually to win the deciding game of baseball of the three played against the hitherto invincible Harmony nine.

Mr. Charles Taft, principal owner of the mill in question, was in full sympathy with this newly aroused ambition on the part of the Chester boys to excel in athletic sports. He himself had been a devoted adherent of all such games while in college, and the fascination had never entirely died out of his heart. So he saw to it that Joe Hooker had considerable latitude in the way of afternoons off, in order that the town boys might profit by his advice and coaching.

"A clever run, that, Joel," he now told the bedraggled boy who had just been downed, after dragging two of his most determined opponents several yards. "The ball still belongs to your side. Another yard, my lad, and you would have made a clean touchdown. A few weeks of hard practice like this and you boys, unless I miss my guess, ought to be able to put old Chester on the gridiron map where she belongs. Now let's go back to the tackle job again, and the dummy. Some of you, I'm sorry to say, try to hurl yourselves through the air like a catapult, when the rules of the game say plainly that a tackle is only fair and square so long as one foot remains in contact with the ground."

So Joe Hooker had been laying down the law to his charges every decent afternoon, when school was out, for going on two weeks now....