The Fighting Scrub by Ralph Henry Barbour — Read

The discouraging thing about beating the First was that the First wouldn't stay beaten. If you scored on it one day it came back the following day and tried to see just how overbearing it could be. Or if you beat it on Monday, say, it spent the rest of the week rubbing your face in the dirt, until you almost wished you hadn't been so rash. So the Scrub's hour of triumph was brief. On Tuesday the enemy, with all its best talent present, took a long, craving look at the Scrub and proceeded to devour it. Three scores, two touchdowns and a field-goal resulted from the first period, by the end of which the Scrub was somewhat demoralized although still fighting. During the five minutes of intermission Mr. Babcock managed to restore his charges to a fair condition of usefulness. What no one could understand was why, when the Scrub had the ball, the First got the jump every time and upset every play before it reached the line. This had happened with such monotony that the most reasonable explanation seemed to be that the First had somehow since yesterday become endowed with clairvoyant powers that enabled it to know beforehand what the opponent meant to do. That the First had learned the Scrub signals had occurred to the latter, only to be promptly rejected. Neither Coach Otis nor Captain Lothrop would profit by such an advantage. Yet, merely to make a certainty more sure, or, perhaps, because no other remedy suggested itself, the signals, already changed when Clem Henning had joined the enemy forces, had been switched again since play had started. So that couldn't be it.

Yet something was wrong. The Scrub wasn't playing any slower than usual; in fact, both line and backfield were almost beating the ball; and yet to-day the only safe play for the Scrub was a punt, and even one of those had been nearly blocked! "Cocky" puzzled and wracked his brain without finding the solution, and the Scrub went back to the massacre still perplexed and irritated. Yet the second scrimmage period wasn't so bad, for there was only one more score by the First, and the Scrub made four first downs and got within twenty yards of the enemy's goal. Nevertheless it was a chastened and somewhat dazed squad which made its weary way back to the gymnasium in the early dusk. Perhaps the defeated army after Waterloo felt about the way the Scrub did. Yesterday they had been, to-day they were not. And no one was able to say why!