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Post by timholycross on Mar 29, 2020 13:10:25 GMT -5
DAN SHAUGHNESSY
1969 Holy Cross football team lost its season to a virus
By Dan Shaughnessy Globe Columnist,Updated March 28, 2020, 1:33 p.m.
Most of them have turned 70 years old. Like almost everyone else in America, they practice social distancing and miss the daily box scores.
But the aging men who played on the Holy Cross football team in 1969 understand what is happening more than most because they lived through something similar a half-century ago when their season was canceled after 90 players and coaches tested positive for hepatitis A. The ’69 Crusaders finished 0-2 and spent the balance of their season quarantined in Hanselman Hall near the top of Pakachoag Hill. For many, it meant their final days of football were erased by a virus.
“I just got a notice in the mail that our 50th class reunion is canceled,” said Bob DeSaulniers, a senior defensive lineman for the 1969 Crusaders. "Reminded me of what happened to us back then.''
Holy Cross was still a Division 1 football school in 1969, annually scheduling the likes of Syracuse, Rutgers, and Boston College. The Crusaders had a new coach and high hopes when they went through workouts late in the summer of 1969, and they put up a decent battle, losing their opener, 13-0, at Harvard
"It felt like our feet were stuck in the mud in that game,'' recalled running back Eddie Jenkins, who went on to become a member of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins before he started his own law practice in Boston (Jenkins’s Holy Cross roommate was the infamous Ted Wells). “We should have been much better that day. Harvard was not that much faster than us.”
“I was cramping up for no reason,” recalled DeSaulniers, who went on to a long career as a Massachusetts high school principal and coach. "One of our guys [defensive end Bob Cooney] had been sick just before the Harvard game, but we thought it was an isolated thing."
It was not an isolated thing. Public health officials and specialists discovered in late August that Holy Cross players and coaches had ingested hepatitis-infected groundwater that seeped into submerged pipes feeding a faucet near the team’s practice field. The incubation period of hepatitis A is approximately 28 days. Cooney tested positive Sept. 29, two days after the Harvard game. It was only the beginning.
"People started dropping off, two or three a day during the next week when we were getting ready for Dartmouth,” said Jenkins.
“I remember going to the infirmary and getting a blood test and then getting on the bus to Dartmouth,” added DeSaulniers.
Tom Lamb, a senior captain from Western Mass. who later gained fame as Doug Flutie’s Natick High School football coach, said, “We got up there on Friday night and guys were getting sick during dinner and we were sending them home. Everyone was wondering what was up. I was a fullback, but our tailback was sent home so they called me into a coaches’ meeting and told me I’d be playing tailback instead of fullback.”
Dartmouth beat a woozy Holy Cross team, 38-6.
In the next day’s Globe, sports editor Ernie Roberts led his story with, "This report should be going to the American Medical Journal. Unbeaten Dartmouth demolished a Holy Cross team hobbled by seven hospitalized starters . . . ''
"That game got out of hand,'' said DeSaulniers. "I played nose tackle, then center. We had people playing out of position. Guys were dropping.''
"We only had about 14 players by the end of the game,'' recalled Jenkins. "I think I played wide receiver, running back, and ended up on defense and special teams. We had guys throwing up on the sidelines. It was awful. We knew something was going on.''
Two days later, Holy Cross president Rev. Raymond Swords, medical personnel, and new coach Bill Whitton addressed the team in the naval surplus airplane hanger that served as the Holy Cross campus field house. Players were informed that the season was over because of an outbreak of hepatitis A. Ninety of 97 players and coaches had the virus. Those presenting with severe symptoms were dispatched to the infirmary, while the rest of the team was ordered to Hanselman Hall, a relatively new dormitory on the upper campus. The plan called for the team to be quarantined 4-6 weeks. Meals and classwork assignments would be delivered to their rooms. Nobody was to leave. Or enter.
"They turned our dorm into a hospital and told us, ‘Tell your parents you’re going to be in there six weeks,' ‘’ recalled Jenkins. “They took blood every day, maybe twice a day The food was great. They’d bring steak to your room because they wanted us to have a lot of protein. They told us alcohol could kill us. I think the fact that our campus was so isolated and in Worcester helped to control the disease.”
“I still remember walking up the hill by Hanselman and looking at all the football players, waving out the window,” said Michael LaVigne, a freshman soccer player at Holy Cross in 1969 who later coached in the women’s varsity program at Boston College for 25 years. “It was great for those of us on the soccer team. We had big crowds coming to our games.”
“The funniest thing was when people would come to bring you food,” senior co-captain Bill Moncevicz told the Worcester Telegram. “It was like the lepers in ‘Ben-Hur.' They would leave food and treats at the door and then we would open the door and we would pull them in."
Players read assignments delivered by professors. They took tests. They met with doctors and nurses daily. They congregated in the room of offensive guard Sean Higgins to watch the Miracle Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series.
Lamb was allowed to redshirt and came back as a senior captain for the following season. The year after hepatitis, Holy Cross went 0-10-1, which gave the school a 14-game winless streak stretching back to 1968. The final game of the 1970 season was a 54-0 loss to rival Boston College in Chestnut Hill. Holy Cross’s sophomore punter, Rich Pelletier of Salem, was cited in the Globe’s game coverage as a player who "performed minor miracles in averaging 40 yards with 13 punts."
"It was an experience I’d like to forget,'' Pelletier said last week. "On the 14th punt attempt, maybe the long snapper was tired. The ball bounced to me and I ran a few yards for our third first down of the day. It was humiliating.''
A half-century later, those once-young men live lives of social distancing and self-quarantine. And like a lot of American high school and college athletes, they know what it feels like to have a season erased by a virus.
“This brings memories, it really does,” said Lamb. “I know it’s hard for people who are not in sports, and I know there are a lot of things more important right now. I have that perspective. But this is such a loss to these high school and college athletes who’ve put so much into it. When you’re on a school team, so much of your day is directed toward academics and sports. These kids today have lost both of those things. That happened to us and it stays with you.”
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Post by alum on Mar 29, 2020 14:20:05 GMT -5
I read the comments on the Globe site. They were much kinder than the ones Dan usually attracts. Americans treat each other better in difficult times.
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Post by joe on Mar 29, 2020 15:19:11 GMT -5
“Holy Cross was still a Division 1 school in 1969 . . . “
Why does he do that?
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Post by dietpepsi on Mar 29, 2020 16:39:53 GMT -5
“Holy Cross was still a Division 1 school in 1969 . . . “ Why does he do that? Gave me a laugh...can't really blame him
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Post by A Clock Tower Purple on Mar 29, 2020 18:25:50 GMT -5
He writes it for perspective for those unfamiliar, and also because it's true.
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Post by joe on Mar 30, 2020 9:03:32 GMT -5
No he isn’t. We’re recruiting from a pool of athletes that are also getting recruited by FBS schools, as are other FCS leagues including our friends in the Ivy League. Go ask the coaches at NDSU and JMU if their programs are D1. A few years ago, I’d let this comment slide but not today.
This reporter ought to know better, especially as an HC alum.
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Post by joe on Mar 30, 2020 10:04:35 GMT -5
Are there any Globe subscribers who can send an email to the Globe and Shaughnessy to set the record straight and demand a correction? Already done. Ball in his court.
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Post by joe on Mar 30, 2020 11:29:26 GMT -5
Maybe, it would leave a bigger impression if the Globe/Shaughnessy were flooded with emails from loyal daughters and sons of HC demanding a correction. Here you go: dshaughnessy@globe.com Agree, please do. Insult to every player since 1969. Plus by his definition, HC stopped playing D1 football sometime in the 1940s.
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Post by hc87 on Mar 30, 2020 11:31:56 GMT -5
He is wrong technically but he's not altogether off either. In the late '60s and early '70s we were still playing about 5 or so non-Ivy D1 games a year, by the end of the decade we were really only playing BC and Army (with the occasional outlier like Rutgers or Air Force) as non-Ivy D1 opponents. My personal take/opinion is that we basically stopped being "seen or perceived" as a major D1 football program when Dr. Anderson retired in 1964. No one to blame here.....it was just how the college football world evolved/changed then. All that being said, I will join the emailers to our fellow, curly-headed alumnus.
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Post by joe on Mar 30, 2020 11:41:13 GMT -5
Unless he or she in engaged in poetry or fiction, a writer needs to be correct both technically and figuratively.
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Post by rgs318 on Mar 30, 2020 11:47:24 GMT -5
He is wrong technically but he's not altogether off either. IMHO "wrong" is wrong, not just "off".My personal take/opinion is that we basically stopped being "seen or perceived" as a major D1 football program when Dr. Anderson retired in 1964. Division 1 does nots depend on how one is "seen or perceived. That us not just opinion. It is a fact. HC was not and is not Division 2 or 3. Aren't all FBS and FCS teams Division 1.All that being said, I will join the emailers to our fellow, curly-headed alumnus. Glad to hear that.
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Post by hc87 on Mar 30, 2020 11:54:38 GMT -5
I just sent him an email to correct his error.
My previous post was just to explain how FCS football is perceived by many....even those in the media who should know bettah.
FCS football definitely is D1 football...it's tremendous football, producing many into the NFL, teams beating FBS schools yearly etc etc but to many unfortunately, it isn't seen or perceived to be truly D1 football.
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Post by hc87 on Mar 30, 2020 12:06:30 GMT -5
Let's just say I received a rather interesting response to my email Not sure if I should post here....any of the many and varied legal scholars care to guide me on this?
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Post by rgs318 on Mar 30, 2020 12:09:38 GMT -5
I just sent him an email to correct his error. My previous post was just to explain how FCS football is perceived by many....even those in the media who should know bettah. FCS football definitely is D1 football...it's tremendous football, producing many into the NFL, teams beating FBS schools yearly etc etc but to many unfortunately, it isn't seen or perceived to be truly D1 football. Fair enough. I agree that people do make mistakes, but that does not make them correct, does it?
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Post by hchoops on Mar 30, 2020 12:13:26 GMT -5
Let's just say I received a rather interesting response to my email Not sure if I should post here....any of the many and varied legal scholars care to guide me on this? Yes, post it
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Post by hchoops on Mar 30, 2020 12:15:10 GMT -5
He is wrong technically but he's not altogether off either. In the late '60s and early '70s we were still playing about 5 or so non-Ivy D1 games a year, by the end of the decade we were really only playing BC and Army (with the occasional outlier like Rutgers or Air Force) as non-Ivy D1 opponents. My personal take/opinion is that we basically stopped being "seen or perceived" as a major D1 football program when Dr. Anderson retired in 1964. BC may have disagreed in November 1966.
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Post by joe on Mar 30, 2020 12:23:46 GMT -5
Boston needs more coverage of it’s local college teams and less articles about a 43 year old QB.
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Post by hc87 on Mar 30, 2020 12:25:57 GMT -5
Who's going to defend me pro bono here if I get sued? Thanks, Jim. I have much respect for all Crusader athletes. So you are telling me you consider our program today D-1? Even though it is subdivision and we play Georgetown and the like? Are we eligible for the top 25 poll? Are our best players eligible to be D-1 All Americans? Is this how we want to refer to our program? Do NCAA coaches consider HC a D-1 football school? The point of that paragraph was to demonstrate that we don't scheduled like we did in 1969. I am stunned that anyone would quarrel with that distinction. Respectfully, shaughnessy '75
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Post by KY Crusader 75 on Mar 30, 2020 12:50:56 GMT -5
Dan was a classmate of mine although I never met him--he must not have played intramurals or pickup ball or have visited Wheeler Bar . I'll send him a note
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Post by Ray on Mar 30, 2020 12:53:27 GMT -5
Love the email campaign, but the next time Dan admits he was wrong about something will be the first.
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Post by timholycross on Mar 30, 2020 15:40:27 GMT -5
Hey, I got him to change the name of the president....when the article came out online originally, he had Father Brooks promoted a year early. That's progress.
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Post by thecrossisback on Mar 30, 2020 17:04:55 GMT -5
I hope the story gets to Chesney and he highlights the Division 1 part. Post it in the locker room somewhere. Then invite Dan to either the PL championship or FCS playoff game.
Clearly he is misinformed about how good the players are!
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Post by trimster on Mar 30, 2020 17:57:08 GMT -5
Boston needs more coverage of it’s local college teams and less articles about a 43 year old QB. I don’t see that changing any time soon. College team coverage seems like an afterthought in the Hub.
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Post by A Clock Tower Purple on Mar 30, 2020 18:19:35 GMT -5
When BC/UMass/Harv/NU are good, they get ink in the Globe; and the Herald does and always has done a much better job with college coverage regardless of how good the schools schools are in any given season.
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Post by hc87 on Mar 30, 2020 18:38:21 GMT -5
What are these things you people call newspapers?
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