"Not hard," replied coach, shaking his head. "If you do, you'll
get your men down too fine. Now, there's almost more danger in
having your men overtrained than in having them undertrained.
Your men can be trained too hard and go stale."
"I've heard of that," Dick nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes," continued coach, "and I've seen school teams that suffered
from training down too fine. Boys can't stand it. They haven't
as much flesh in training down hard, and they haven't as much
endurance as college men, who are older. Captain, you will train
your men lightly, three afternoons a week. For the rest, see
to it that they stick to all training orders, including diet and
hygiene and no tobacco. But don't work any of the men hard, with
an idea of getting them in still better shape. You can't do it."
"Then I'd like to make a suggestion, Coach."
"Go ahead, Captain."
"You never saw a school team, did you, sir, that understood its
signal work any too well?"
"Never," laughed Mr. Morton.
"Then I would suggest, sir, that most of our training time, from
now until the season opens, be spent on drilling in the signals.
We ought to keep at practicing the signals. We ought to get
the signals down better than ever a Gridley team had them before,
sir."
"You've just the right idea, Captain!" cried Mr. Morton heartily,
resting one hand around Dick's shoulders. "I was going to order
that, but I'm glad you anticipated me.
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