t was of a
most unusual type. Even when he was doing the heaviest damage to the
Navy Corps the midshipmen could not but admire his wonderful work.
What the Hustlers are to Annapolis the Cullom Hall team is to West
Point. It is made up of the leftovers from the first squad and
substitutes. One would travel far afield in search of a team with more
spirit and greater pep in action, whether playing in outside games, or
as their coach would put it, "showing up" the first Eleven. Not
infrequently a player of the highest caliber is developed in this squad
and taken to the first eleven.
The Cullom Hall squad, whose eleven generally manages to clean up some
of the strongest school teams of the Hudson Valley, draws not a little
of its spirit, I think, from the late Lieutenant E. M. Zell, better
known at the Academy as "Jobey." It was a treat to see the Cullom Hall
team marching down the field against the first Eleven with the roly-poly
figure of Jobey in the thick of every scrimmage, coaching at the top of
his lungs, even when bowled over by the interference of his own pupils.
Since his time the squad has been turned over to Lieutenants Sellack and
Crawford, who have kept alive the traditions and the playing spirit of
this unique organization.
Their reward for the bruising, hard work, with hardly a shadow of the
hope of getting their letter, comes in seeing the great game itself.
Like the college scrub teams the hardest rooters for the Varsity are to
be found in their ranks.
Now for the game itself. Always hard fought, always well fought, there
is perhaps no clash of all the year that so wakes the interest of the
general public, that vast throng which, without college affiliations,
is nevertheless hungry for the right of allegiance somewhere, somehow.
While the Service Elevens are superbly supported by the men who have
been through the exacting mill at West Point and Annapolis--their
sweethearts and wives, not to mention sisters, cousins, uncles and
aunts--they are urged on to battle by that great impartial public which
believes that in a sense these two teams belong to it. It is not
uncommon to find men who have had no connection with either academy in
hot argument as to the relative merits of the teams.
Once in the stands some apparently trifling thing begets a partisanship
that this class of spectator is wont to wonder at after it is all over.
Whether in Philadelphia in the earlier history of these contests on
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