Yale Week on the Varsity Football Team: A Player Describes Pre-Game Preparations

John Hoffman '65, first-team All-Ivy tackle, honors English student, and actor, wrote the following article from notes he kept during the week before this fall's Harvard-Yale football game which Harvard won, 18-14. Hoffman whose right knee had been injured in the game against Princeton, missed the Brown game, the Saturday before Yale, because of injury. The next week, he started practicing again.

Monday

Monday is a day not of contact, but of review. We go over our own plays and the other team's plays; we learn what we missed because of injuries ("Are you whole?" Jim Feula asked nervously) and we work to sharpen up the things we've worked on all season long.

We reviewed Yale's offense carefully. "The big thing to watch is that fullback up the middle," said Jim Lentz. "They rely on it a lot. There's an option--they fake to the fullback off tackle and pitch to a halfback outside, but the fullback runs right at the tackle anyway. When he does that, I don't mind if you knock him down," he smiled happily.

Again and again we went over defense--weak, strong, power and normal--and then worked against the offense's pass attack. Dave Davis and Pete Peterson, still relatively new men, needed help remembering the "east" and "west" calls on pass defense (which determine whether a tackle charges the passer on a dropback pass)

We went to offense, charging a group that held blocking dummies in the position of the Yale defense. I realized that it was my first contact in a week as I went thundering into one of the sophomores. He threw down the blocking dummy in disgust--I had stepped on his toe.

Practice ended about 6:15 p.m., and for 45 minutes the team watched the movies of Saturday's Brown game in groups: guards and centers, tackles and ends, and backs, listening to the coaches point out mistakes. This time I stayed away; my knee injury had kept me out of the game.

I hitched my usual ride on Dan Calderwood's motorcycle and we drove to the Varsity Club, where the team eats together. Someone mentioned that people were thinking of having a prep rally the night before the game. Van Cunningham, the manager, thought it would be a good idea, but the team was against it. "We're just sacrificial cows," said Paul Barringer, and he spoke for a lot of us; the students who treat football players as a joke would treat the pep rally as a joke, and this week no one was in a joking mood.

Usually I leave the world of football after dinner, but on Mondays there is a team meeting to go over the scouting reports on the week's opponent. The coaches handed out a 20-page brochure on Yale: the roster, statistics, play diagrams, defense diagrams, and on and on. Bob Gongola, the offensive backfield coach, had scouted them. Gongola, tall, blond, and muscular, with a flat-top haircut, stands out by inches when the coaches pose for pictures. He is, in his own immortal phrase, "a big stud."

"That Mercein, he's a big stud," he was saying (the coaches never considered, at least to us, the delicious possibility that Yale's star fullback might not play). "He's the spark of the team. They're a great comeback team, they love to come back at you in the fourth quarter, and he's the guy who sparks them."

It was a heavy team, Gongola told us. The line averaged 217 pounds, and they had good depth. He warned us about Bill Henderson, a speedy halfback with a 6.7-yard average, and about Mercein (but Mercein, Gongola had noticed, had a weakness--on a play that was to send him into the line, he lined up on his toes. If he was to run around end, he stayed back on his heels. It was something any lineman could see and exploit).

We split up into positions again; I stayed with the tackles and ends as we watched Yale play Dartmouth on film. They had beaten Dartmouth, 24-14; we had lost to Dartmouth 48-0. But they weren't unbeatable. "Yeah, they can be had," said Jim Lentz.

Tuesday

Chuck Reischel is a big, fast, tough right guard, who is in Group II and wants to be a political scientist. While Jack Fadden taped his hip, Reischel explained Machiavelli to an awed audience of junior Tom Choquette. Reischel had been looked on with awe all fall for his football playing as well as his academic status. His fellow linemen called him "the iron horse" since almost everybody else on the line had missed some kind of work because of injuries.

I was a good example. I was a bit slow getting down to the Field House, and took so long getting my various sore joints taped that I was five minutes late to practice. I missed calisthenics and ran over to where Feula was leading the tackles through practice blocking.

Lentz picked Tuesday to put in a new defense, the "52." It's simple variant of our normal "55"--the three interior linemen in our five-man line jam more closely together. That means the middle is packed and tougher to run against. It also leaves linebackers with more outside responsibility. And it would throw Yale's blocking assignments off. It's hard to keep track of one man who's shifting from one position to another.

At practice, we work on individual positions first, then spend 20 minutes on the kicking game. We threw in a little surprise for Yale--a quick kick. Bobby Leo, who punted for his freshman team, was supposed to do the kicking. But there wasn't enough time to get it straightened out. The quarterback was supposed to flip to Leo, who would get off a quick punt. But one time the snap misfired, once the lateral misfired, and another time the kick was blocked. Feula finally threw the play out.

There was an hour and 10 minutes of team work, offense and defense. Finally we worked on specialties--punting and punt returns, passing and pass catching. The line normally works one-on-one at this point, but today Lentz let us go early. He wanted our timing to stay sharp. "It was a good practice," said Frank Ulcickas as we ran off. There had been lots of audible and visible spirit; everyone was hustling and chattering. The coaches were still tense, but quite hap- py. "Keep it up the rest of the week," said Yovicsin.

Wednesday

For the first time in my Harvard career, I had been conscientious about getting a lot of sleep each night. I had been up all night on Thursday before the Princeton game (for a Friday hour exam) and felt it--I lost a lot of stamina on the field. It was in that game that I was injured.

For a well-rested team, it was a lousy practice. The timing was off badly. We were doing the same things we had done yesterday, but this time backs charged into each other, signals missed. There was a lot of effort, but nothing was working out.

"Just one of those days," said Feula--we had them before and there wasn't much you could do about it. On Saturday you had to forget about mistakes and play all out.

At 7:00 we headed up to dinner. The Varsity Club features occasional steaks, filet mignon once or twice a week, thick pork chops, good roast beef and lamb. The food is always good, but tonight's conversation was low.

Maybe another good night's sleep would do it.

Thursday

All year long, I had hoped to play opposite Yale's captain Ab Lawrence, who starts at right tackle. Playing against him would add another challenge to The Game--Lawrence weighs 240 pounds, was all-Ivy, and he is respected by his teammates, who run off him a lot.

That isn't Harvard's style. We play the system; you never run to or away from an individual because he's strong or weak. Similarly, you never favor one play because a man on our team is a good blocker or a good runner. You simply call the play according to the strategic considerations: the type of defense, field position, down, quarter, and time remaining. Our offense isn't made to exploit individuals, but to use all eleven men.

Yale plays differently, though, and so we knew what to expect. They run Mercein off Lawrence a lot. But as Thursday's practice started, it looked like I wouldn't get my wish. Joe Jurek, our starting right tackle, was still limping from a thigh bruise. If Jurek didn't start, I would shift from left tackle to right, leaving Steve Diamond, the sophomore, in the position he was accustomed to.

The rest of the team wasn't in great shape either. Gene Skowronski and Tom choquette had been in the hospital with injuries though they were out and practicing now. Ulcickas had been hurt towards the start of the week. Neal Curtin, who started the season at left tackle, had torn nerves in his feet. The backfield was full of assorted miseries.

We never have contact on Thursdays. Usually there is a short scrimmage on Wednesday, but his week it had been limited to a five-minute defensive scrimmage. In pre-season practice we had gone 20 minutes each way.

We skipped individual drills and worked on team and kicking drills for 40 minutes each. There was a lot of yelling, with some discontent among the ends and linebackers when the coaches threw in a new defense. It was the "stack," with linebackers right in back of the tackles. That left a lot of pressure on the ends on outside plays, but jammed the middle. There were complaints: "It's too late in the week to relearn another defense." We had used the same formation as late as the Penn game, a month before.

It was a much better practice. "We'll win if we can keep up a controlled game throughout," Yovicsin said.

Friday

Practices are short on Friday. Today's lasted an hour-we worked on specialty plays, like onside kicks. It was a light, breezy workout. The team was ready and it showed it. John O'Brien caused some consternation by not showing up on time--the day before the Yale game and where was the captain? "Being interviewed for a fellowship, and they wouldn't let me out," he explained when he charged down minutes later.

Before practice the photographers took over. We posed out next to the practice field fence while they clustered around and snapped forever, I felt sorry about Gene (Skowronski) and Joe (Jurek), who should have been in the picture, but were not starting because of injuries.

We left the field shouting and yelling; after dinner the pep rally left everyone a bit uncertain. It seemed almost unplanned. Yovicsin told the student body the game depended on them, since the team was ready. O'Brien introduced the team, one by one. Then we drove off to the Framingham Motor Inn to spend the night (late parietals and noisy parties the night before the Yale game make both the team and the coaches anxious for our sleep. So the team moves to a $20-a-night motel).

We were supposed to be shown a movie, "The Bridges of Toko-Ri," but the projector broke. A few of the players played bridge or studied; most of them watched television until 10 or 11. It was tough getting to sleep for this game; there were quite a few sleeping pills consumed.

Saturday

We were up early, in time for orange juice and toast at the motel. A bust trip to Boston and some time killed at each end and it was 10:30 and time for the training meal at the V-Club.

We walked across the river to Dillon and started getting taped. The team was silent, but not frighteningly so; the rock 'n' roll blared on the radio as Jack Fadden and his staff covered almost everyone's legs with tape.

We went into the squad room for a team meeting. Feula spoke first, going over some last-minute blocking assignments. He was visibly keyed up and said little. "It's your game. Let's do a job." Lentz was nervous. Quickly, he went over all the important defensive plays, especially for the defensive backfield. With Mercein out, we would have to contain Yale's top offensive threat, quarterback Ed McCarthy's passing.

Then Yovicsin got up. "This is the day we've been waiting for," he told us. "Let's go out there and be good football players and let's be a good football team (there is always an emphasis in Yovicsin's remarks on individual's efforts building up into a team effort)." Silence or a few words sometimes do more for a team's spirit than haranguing; we shouted and charged out of the dressing room, all ready to make this game mean something.

We ran out into the Stadium. It was a beautiful day; the turf was in excellent shape, though it had rained a bit earlier in the week. We whipped through calisthenics and drills, the loosening-up exercises that prepare you, mentally as well as physically, for game action. The spectators seemed to echo our internal tension.

About 10 minutes later O'Brien led us under the stands to the team room. It is here that the team goes before the game and during the half. Usually the coaches have long speeches to make in here; they must work the team up, get its emotion to peak as it runs onto the field. But now long speeches were unnecessary "It's in your hands," said Yovicsin. "We've done all we can for you and you'll have to take it the rest of the way yourselves." Then, as they always do, he and his assistants left the meeting, leaving the seniors to talk to the players who lay around waiting in the packed room.

O'Brien spoke first, as the captain always does, and he spoke of how important the game would seem when we looked back on it 20 years from now. A indescribable tension hits you before a football game or a wrestling match or any other tough, individual competition. O'Brien sat down and Paul Guzzi stood and talked, obviously in earnest, about giving it all we had in this last big one. I barely heard him.

I stood up myself after Guzzi and talked awhile. I said that we ought to realize now that there was a lot that we owed to each other and to the coaches. It went something like "Let's cut out being critical about ourselves, or the coaches, or anything. Let's just get out and really love each other, and the coaches--let's be a unit."

Jerry Mechling stood and added a few words. The manager came in to tell us that in three minutes we would go on the field.

Gene Skowronski got up and it was Gene who seemed to say what everyone needed to be told. "I don't know why," he said, "but I was out on the field just now, and I felt all upset and jittery, just like all of you guys. But then I got a feeling, all of a sudden I knew everything was going to be all right. I know it is; I know we're going to win."

It was time; everyone stood and shouted at what Gene had said. Then we ran out of the team room and onto the field