Football

We played football at Saunders School…tackle football. Saunders produced the likes of Herb Holler, Stan Kerr, Tim Proctor, and Terry Ross. All were starters and impact players in high school. Those guys and many others got their start on the football field on the northeast corner of the playground. We thought we were the only elementary school where kids played tackle football. We were “tough!”

Those football games not only produced a lot of football players but also a lot of injuries. A school year didn’t go by without a broken arm or two. I remember a broken leg and collar bone, too. I, fortunately, never had worse than a black eye or a bloody nose. I remember having my breath knocked out a couple times, too. Tackle football was sort of a sacred thing at Saunders so no one ever let a few injuries stand in the way of playing the game.

Football games would go on every recess for days. Sometimes the sides were fair and sometimes not. Kids tended to pick their friends and as new kids would join the group they would end up on one side or the other. My favorite thing was to be on the side that no one thought would win and then surprise everyone. Danny Welcher was tall and faster than most of us. Gary Challen was fearless and even though he was small he could take a hit with the best of them.

One of the toughest players was Tom Dorothy. He would run right over kids. Terry said he had a steel plate in his head. I don’t know but I thought he had steel plates in his knees. He would get his legs churning and knock kids out of the way like bowling pins. I tried to stop him a few times and couldn’t even slow him down.

Terry decided we had to do something about it if Tom was not going to be on our team. His plan was to sacrifice his body for the team. He decided he would just hurl himself though the air and hope to slow Tom down so the rest of us could tackle him. It was a suicide mission but Terry was determined to do it.

So when we lined up the next recess we knew what to do. When Tom took the ball Terry crashed into him and the rest of us grabbed Tom’s legs. In a moment the dynasty was over. The giant had been defeated and there was again parity of the playing field. Not for long though, because then Tom decided he wanted to be on our team.

Some kids just didn’t like physical contact. They would do all they could do to avoid contact when we played. Others just didn’t play at all. One of the schools bullies lost all of his credibility because he wouldn’t play tackle football. While kids like me seemed to gain confidence, kids like that just seemed to disappear into the woodwork. It’s funny how someone so prominent in your life can just fade out like that.

Somehow the teachers who supervised the playground let this go on. The truth was that the teacher who had recess duty didn’t venture far from the building. They just walked around on the blacktop so they missed out on anything that happened out on the playground.