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