This spurred us on to better team work and to victory.  The attendants at the hospital told us later that they never had had such a lively patient.  He kept things stirring from start to finish of the gridiron battle.  As the reports of the game were brought to him, he joined in the thrill of the play.

“My injury proved a blessing,” says Reiter, “as it gave me an extra year, for in those days a year did not count in football, unless you played against Yale, and when I made the touchdown against Yale the following season, it was a happy moment for me.”

All is not clear sailing in football.  The breaks must come some time.  They may come singly or in a bunch, but whenever they do come, it takes courage to buck the hard luck in the game.  Just when things get nicely under way one of the star players is injured, which means the systematic team work is handicapped.  It is not the team, as a whole that I am thinking of, but the pangs of sorrow which go down deep into a fellow’s soul, when he finds that he is injured; that he is in the hands of the doctor.  It is then he realizes that he is only a spoke in the big wheel; that the spirit of the game puts another man in his place.  The game goes on.  Nature is left to do her best for him.

Let us for a while consider the player who does not realize, until after the game is over, that he is hurt.  It is after the contest, when the excitement has ceased, when reaction sets in, that a doctor and trainer can take stock of the number and extent of casualties.

When such injured men are discovered, at a time like that, we wonder how they ever played the game out.  In fact the man never knew he was injured until the game was over.  No more loyal supporter of football follows the big games than Reggi Wentworth, Williams, ’91.

He is most loyal to Bill Hotchkiss, Williams ’91.

“At Williamstown, one year,” Wentworth says, “Hotchkiss, who was a wonderful all round guard, probably as great a football player as ever lived (at least I think so) played with the Williams team on a field covered with mud and snow three inches deep.  The game was an unusually severe one, and Hotchkiss did yeoman’s work that day.

“As we ran off the field, after the game, I happened to stop, turned, and discovered Hotchkiss standing on the side of the field, with his feet planted well apart, like an old bull at bay.  I went back where he was and said: 

“‘Come on, Bill, what’s the matter?’

“‘I don’t know,’ said he.  ’There’s something the matter with my ankles.  I don’t think I can walk.’

“He took one step and collapsed.  I got a boy’s sled, which was on the field, laid Hotchkiss on it and took him to his room, only to find that both ankles were sprained.  He did not leave his room for two weeks and walked with crutches for two weeks more.  It seemed almost unbelievable that a man handicapped as he was could play the game through.  Splints and ankle braces were unknown in those days.  He went on the field with two perfectly good ankles.  How did he do it?”