The Norwood High squad which will meet their annual rivals, Dedham, in the Thanksgiving Day Classic at the High School field on Thursday morning.
Front row, left to right, W. Dobson, re; E Simaski rt F. Babel, rg; B. Ruscetti, center and co-captain; L. Jiampictro, 1g; B. Tronti, It; E. Leary le.
Back row, left to right, A. Slaney, rhb; D. Butters, rhb, utility; B. Donovan, qb and co-captain: R Kazlauskas, fb; J. Minkevitch, fb, utility; M. Kelley, qb,utility; N. Bader, Ih.
The "Three" of the district ended their football season on Thanksgiving Day. Norwood and Walpole culminated very successful seasons, winning from their Turkey Day rivals in most convincing style. Canton lost to Stoughton by a very close 7-6 score. Coach Bill Donovan's boys played valiantly against great odds to keep a very good Stoughton team from scoring until very late in the game. Bill pulled a nice piece of strategy by putting Malcolmson in the backfield. He came through in exceptionally fine style, banging out yardage all morning.
Norwood finished its best season in five years by defeating a light but scrappy Dedham team. Norwood is undefeated this year, and there is every indication of a good season on tap for next year.
One of the more surprising situations of the game was the fact that Coach Jack Heaphy did not use Hub Katchpole as a decoy, as he. had done in other years. Many figured that he would have Hub run around the ends in some plays breaking from a reverse, and at the same time have Podolski take the ball cracking the line, while the Norwod backfield was chasing Katchpole, but apparently Heaphy instructed his quarterback to keep feeding little Hub running plays because on the very first play.
Hub took the ball and was smeared with a one-yard loss.
Norwood Line Effective
The Norwood line completely rode over Dedham's line. The revealing feature of this situation is that this same Dedham line held a powerful Chelsea line outweighing them by forty pounds per man scoreless for three-fourths of the game. Also that they made "Grigus," the Red Raider Chelsea back, give ground repeatedly that night. Opinion is rife about town that this Norwood team could take on any top team in New England.
That's not too broad an opinion, even though many believe that Norwood's ground attack is not too impressive. It has to be admitted that when a Norwood team plays it is more than scouted. Coaches know every move a Norwood back is going to make and they spend much more time in developing an adequate defense, than on any other department.
For years Norwood has been trouncing teams like Natick, Framingham, and others on the annual seasonal list of games. Therefore when they play Norwood they unconsciously play as hard a game as if their lives depended on the outcome. That is one of the reasons why the Norwood attack seems to bog down on its upfield marches.
Walpole came through in fine style beating an extremely stubborn Franklin team by three downs. Thus ended one of the best seasons Walpole has had in many years. This team was fairly heavy, and many of the backs were of the hard shifty running type. Although held scoreless by their Franklin rivals during the first half, the Hilltoppers came right back in the second and third periods to score an impressive 18 to 0 victory.
(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)
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