Lining Them Up By Time Out

With a pair of veteran guards back again for a nucleus and a group of promising youngsters rapidly rising to positions of reliability, this department of Harvard's gridiron machine is probably better fixed for the impending campaign against the country's best than any of its near relatives.

If there is any position on a football team which takes a more consistent and bruising beating than that of guard it has yet to be discovered, and this is especially true when the opposition is expected to count on its line attack for those vital two and three-yard gains the success of which often spells victory or defeat. Harvard's opponents are mostly of the big-college-powerfully-built type who plan to have their open attacks carefully checked by driving line offensives in critical moments. To have a pair of weak guards who will wilt under heavy battering is to be under a handicap so grievous that it may be termed almost fatal.

It is, therefore, an advantage which cannot be overrated to have J. N. Trainor '31 and W. D. Ticknor '30 both ready for action after a year of seasoning in a schedule made up of one big game after another which has made them into what is generally conceded to be one of the best pairs of guards in Eastern Collegiate football circles.

Neither Trainer nor Ticknor is a physical giant; they both weigh around 190 and stand approximately six feet tall, but what they lack in bulk they amply make up for in strength and stamina. In all these qualities the one is very nearly the exact counterpart of the other, a fact which makes their play very similar and renders it impossible to rate one above the other on merit.

Whatever individual glory the pair received last year accrued largely to Trainer who had the good fortune to escape the injury jinx throughout the entire season. That is to say he escaped all injury which kept him out of games. In the Pennsylvania game he collided with Paul Scull on a certain line play which left its effect on his masticating apparatus but did not keep him from action for any length of time. Trainer later described the Penn captain as the hardest running back he had ever opposed, certainly a tribute to the man whom many rated as the outstanding player of the 1928 football season. After that accident Trainer had a special mask constructed by which he could easily be recognized from the stands. His stalwart work in the succeeding games and particularly the Yale fracas therefore stood out like a beacon light and made the spectators realize what a consistently fine job he was doing in messing up enemy line attacks. He will be wearing his protector again this season, and those who were constant visitors to the Stadium last year will keep their eyes on "the man in the iron mask" with interest and anticipation.

Ticknor is likewise expected to have a big season. He starred on his Freshman eleven and with a great future as a Sophomore predicted for him he ran into the old scholastic snag from which he did not succeed in disentangling himself until the first of last fall. When he did get back into harness he immediately set out to prove that the confidence of two year's before was not misplaced. He did this in so convincing fashion that within a week or so of the opening of practice, he found himself firmly entrenched on the first team, a position from which no one has succeeded in ousting him to date. As time goes on the chances of any such event's happening seem to be getting slimmer and slimmer, and barring injury there are few who doubt that the opening line-up against Yale next month will include Ticknor at one guard and Trainer at the other. There is not another position on the whole team, with the exception of Captain Barrett's tackle berth and possibly the pivot position, that many would dare say the same of.

The understudies of the veteran guard pair are for the most part inexperienced and untried. Running over the list reveals no names whose startling prep school record or freshman performance makes them stand out above their fellows. Desmond Fitzgerald '32, W. K. Ginman '32, H. M. Myerson '32, C. D. Newhart '31, G. N. Talbot '32 and J. R. Truden '31 complete the list of the candidates for the coveted first team positions. They all have at least one more year of active football after the current campaign, and their careful training will be a matter of much attention for the line coaches, despite the seeming sufficiency of first team material.

No account of the linemen of the present Harvard squad would be complete without at least some mention of these same line coaches. They are Hubbard, the famous Harvard guard of several years back, and Dunne, former University of Michigan star. The wonderful job they did in putting together out of seemingly inexperienced material a line which impressed all of its opponents as being more powerful for sheer power that is than almost any other forward wall in the country cannot go by unmentioned. This year, their second together, should find their coaching system at its peak. With excellent material who can toll what manner of irresistible machine may not be created!