“In one game our lack of proper uniform worked to our advantage.  I was on the sick list and had turned my suit over to a substitute.  I braved the doctor’s disapproval and went into the game in a pair of long working trousers and a blue flannel shirt.  The opposing team, Pennsylvania, hailed me as ‘Little Boy Blue,’ and paid no further attention to me, so that by good fortune I made a couple of scores.  Then they fell upon me, and at the close all I had left was the pants.”

J. W. Powell, captain of the ’97 team, tells of the interim between Army-Navy games.

“Our head coach was Johnny Poe,” he says, “and he and Paul Dashiell took charge of the squad.  Some of our good men were Rus White, Bill Tardy, Halligan and Fisher, holding over from the year before.  A. T. Graham and Jerry Landis in the line.  A wild Irishman in the plebe class, Paddy Shea, earned one end position in short order, while A. H. McCarthy went in at the other wing.  Jack Asserson, Bobby Henderson, Louis Richardson and I made up the backfield.  In ’95, Princeton had developed their famous ends back system which was adopted by Johnny Poe and the game we played that year was built around this system.  Johnny was a deadly tackler and nearly killed half the team with his system of live tackling practice.  This was one of the years in which there was no Army and Navy game and our big game was the Thanksgiving Day contest with Lafayette.  Barclay, Bray and Rinehart made Lafayette’s name a terror in the football world.  The game resulted in an 18 to 6 victory for Lafayette.

“My most vivid recollections of that game are McCarthy’s plucky playing with his hand in a plaster cast, due to a broken bone, stopping Barclay and Bray repeatedly in spite of this handicap, and my own touchdown, after a twelve yard run, with Rinehart’s 250 pounds hanging to me most of the way.”

I recall a trip that the Princeton team of 1898 made to West Point.  It was truly an attack upon the historical old school in a fashion de luxe.

Alex Van Rensselaer, an old Princeton football captain, invited Doc Hillebrand to have the Tiger eleven meet him that Saturday morning at the Pennsylvania Ferry slip in Jersey City.  En route to West Point that morning this old Princeton leader met us with his steam yacht, The May.  Boyhood enthusiasm ran high as we jumped aboard.  Good fellowship prevailed.  We lunched on board, dressed on board.  Upon our arrival at West Point we were met by the Academy representative and were driven to the football field.

The snappy work of the Princeton team that day brought victory, and we attributed our success to the Van Rensselaer transport.  Returning that night on the boat, Doc Hillebrand and Arthur Poe bribed the captain of The May to just miss connecting with the last train to Princeton, and as a worried manager sat alongside of Van Rensselaer wondering whether it were not possible to hurry the boat along a little faster, Van Rensselaer himself knew what was in Doc’s mind and so helped make it possible for us to rest at the Murray Hill Hotel over night, and not allow a railroad trip to Princeton mar the luxury of the day.