Sunday, September 8, 1963
Season Hinges On Injuries , ‘Breaks’
Football Practice: Key Word Is No Longer ‘Baby’
Players Are Physically Sanforized
It is still early, so everything looks good. Everything
always does look good early in the season: the team is
fresh and unbeaten, muscles are summer job-limber,
nobody has classroomjpallor or girl troubles. There is
nothing to be depressed about, and the whole UNC foot
ball team is determined not to do anything during the
next twelve weeks to make anybody depressed.
Kenan Stadium cannot be used for scrimmages this
fall because of the construction crews building the new
tiers of seats. The team is practicing on one of the in
tramural fields, scrimmaging there too. This is not quite
as happy an arrangement for the scrimmage-watchers,
that small band of die-hards keep as keen an eye
on the football players as some'other men keep on their
stocks and bonds. Because of the danger to children of
stray punts and runaway players, and the possible dis
tracting influence of pretty girls at close range, Coach
Jim Hickey has given strict orders that nobody gets out
on the field unless directly connected with the team.
Watchers sit on low bleachers around the edge of the
field. For a hot-blooded football fan, watching a scrim
mage at ground level from the edge of an intramural
field must be like watching the Folies Bergeres from the
top of the Effel Tower. On the other hand, says UNC
Sports publicist Bob Quincy, “show me a football player
who won’t stop and look at a pretty girl, and I’ll show
you a man on the third team.” There is a blue-shirted
manager who criss-crosses the practice area steadily
bird-dogging errant watchers.
At one end of the huge practice area, Coach George
Barclay bellows his chant to his freshman players: “No
pussyfootin’ now, you can’t pussyfoot on a football field,
get in there and fight for the ball, fight for it, get rough,
no pussyfootin’.” Coach Barclay’s voice sounds like a
Force Ten gale coming up out of the southwest. When
asked during a rest break how his voice was holding
up, the Coach said it was fine, that he had stopped smok
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ing. “Chew instead,” he said, and decimated half an
orange in three bites.
When asked how his players were holding up, Coach
Barclay said this year’s backfield was the best ever,
and that he was in particular awe of one young gentle
man who, he said, could catch anything, “even on the
top of his head if he wants to.”
There are familiar names among Coach Barclay’s as
sistants: former varsity players Cave, Mueller, and Far
ris, all now doing graduate work at the University after
having been out working for a few years.
At the other end of the field, the Varsity players were
working in three groups, each group practicing some
thing different. On one side there was some beautiful
kicking being done, long, booming punts spiralling clean
ly as though fired from a cannon Junior Edge’s work.
Coach Joe Mark, working with linemen, scolded with
curious gentility. “Gracious sakes alive,” he said, and
an erring player shook his head with chagrin.
“I once knew an old baseball manager,” said Mr.
Quincy, watching from the sidelines. “He never used
profanity. When a player did something wrong and he
got mad, he’d go up and give every sign of using every
dirty word in the book, but all he ever said was, ‘You
dirty rotten dirty, you dirty rotten dirty.’ I guess it’s
the thought that counts. If you were a dirty rotten dirty,
you’d had it.”
From his physiological point of view, trainer John
Lacey, who spends the season bracing bones, .staunch
ing blood, mollifying muscles, and soothing outraged
tendons, was somewhat happier about this year’s team
than last year’s.
Facts:
Most of this year’s team went through the 1962 sea
son, leaving them more or less pre-bruised, like San
forized shirts.
This year’s team knew definitely that it would have
to be able to run the mile in six minutes or less. Only
four of 86 players ran slower than six minutes on the
first try. One man got his time down to 5:09. The play
ers were due a week ago Friday, but some came the pre
ceding Wednesday and tested themselves on the UNC
track.
Contact practice started earlier this year.
There have been fewer injuries so far this year than
last.
Last year there was a good deal of sideline chatter
among the players during practice. The key word was
“baby,” pronounced “behbeh” (“Whussay, behbeh, whus
say”). This year baby seems to be not quite as much
in evidence. Doubtless, there is the same chatter. Hud
dles still break with a sharp clap of hands. The same
encouragements are rattled off. But you don’t get the
old feeling of constantly chanted commentary. You
know the spirit must be there, but you don’t hear it. It
gives the practices a different atmosphere.
The atmosphere is hard to assess. Mr. Quincy is very
circumspect in expressing his opinion. “I think Coach
Hickey feels he can have a very good team,” he said
after a long pause for thought during which he watched
warm bodies clad in blue and white pounding back and
forth like well-oiled machines. “Depending on two
things: injuries, and the common breaks like when
a man is running in the clear and falls down for no
THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY
reason.”
Mr. Quincy said that one day last week he had come
down to practice and as he came through the gap in the
hedge between the track and the practice field, he found
two guinea pigs, a brtwn one and a white one. He pick
ed them up. The-brown guinea pig subsequently depart
ed, but he took the white one home. He had no idea
where they came from. Someone suggested that they
might have escaped from Memorial Hospital’s pen of
laboratory animals. Had he considered the possibility of
having carried a rare virus into his home via guinea pig?
“That’s all I need, a virus and a losing season,” said
Mr. Quincy. He considers the guinea pig a sort of good
luck omen, although as an amulet a guinea pig does not
lend itself to being worn around the neck.
So the atmosphere seems to go something like this:
everybody is in good shape, everybody is loaded with
determination, the team has the advantage of a great
deal more experience, but nobody is crowing, at least
not as audibly as before. There is less of the close-knit
family atmosphere and the practices give a feeling of
less jollity and more grit.
Every twenty minutes or so the bird-dog manager
whangs with a hammer on a hunk of metal nailed to a
telephone pole (one bystander said the whang made him
think of chow), and the groups of practicing players all
play musical coaches, shifting from practice area to
practice area. As they lope in clumps across the soft
green field, their pads squeaking gently and their faces
barely visible behind cow-catcher face guards, they re
mind you of Swiss watches: toughly but delicately put
together, precision movement, shock- and water-proof,
and highly effective. This year they may very well be
self-winding, too; but that will probably depend on how
much they are shaken in the next few weeks, as the
green turn to gold above them and the deep, wall
to-wall pile of the turf gradually turns beige and barren
under the straining, cleated feet.
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Contact Started Earlier This Year
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W'ork On Fundamentals
Photos: Bill Sparrow
Text: J. A. C. Dunn |
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