Contact Work Marks Varsity Grid Sessions

Anybody who feared that Cornell was another Virginia would change his mind after watching practice these last two days. In that space of time the Varsity has undergone more than three hours of the most brutal contact work seen (or heard) in this neighborhood for some time.

Monday, the squad came directly from observing the movies of the Cornell wreckage and, with hardly so much as a warm-up period, launched right into contact work that continued under the lights long after dark.

Yesterday scrimmage was resumed after a brief period of dummy plays. This time a specially-tutored jayvee team made like Cadets, giving the Varsity a taste of Earl Blaik's fast-breaking T formation offense.

Merely "Contact"

Valpey refused to grace these two little workouts with the name of scrimmage, however, preferring to look on them as, "contact sessions." They were all of that, but the coach points out that statistically no plays in an afternoon, for everyone got in on the act for at least a short period. Even Rocky Stone played for the first time in two weeks.

Concerning last Saturday, Valpey is willing to take the blame for all Cornell's scoring in the last half. As he figures it, 'when a game is gone it's gone, and I have to think of next year." In other words, experiments with an eye to the future are more important than keeping the score down.

"We Beat Ourselves"

But the coach also feels that the Crimson's basic difficulty Saturday was due to its own offensive ineptitude, rather than to Cornell's defense. Hence, the emphasis is on fundamentals again this week.

It might be noted that this coming week will be as good a time as any to have a thorough grasp on the basic elements of the game. Army carries the two-platoon system to its logical extremity, where the defensive unit is rumored to be ignorant of offensive assignments, and vice-versa. But what each player does know he puts into effect with depressing finality. In other words Valpey operates on the principle of kill or be killed.