{"id":103254,"date":"2016-09-23T13:02:10","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=103254"},"modified":"2023-12-20T12:44:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T17:44:08","slug":"circa-1939-football-preseason-topham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2016\/09\/23\/circa-1939-football-preseason-topham\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Recollections of Bobcat football 77 years ago from someone who was there"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the phone from Dallas, Al Topham \u201941 bellowed his answer to my question, not sounding like anyone\u2019s idea of a 96-year-old man:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot when you\u2019re trying to win! And we were trying to win!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had asked Topham, a former Bates lineman, if preseason training for three weeks at a New Hampshire boys camp back in the late 1930s had seemed like a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The place was Camp Wonalancet, a now-bygone boys camp in Eaton Center, N.H., that Bates football used for a few years before World War II and at least once after.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t<\/lite-vimeo>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

Back then, classes didn\u2019t begin until late in September, so the month was open for off-campus training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll remember it always,\u201d said Topham. (He advised me that he\u2019d likely talk for a long time. \u201cYou can hang up anytime you want. Won\u2019t be the first time.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lineman who played offensive and defensive tackle, Topham was a two-time All-Maine selection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor my day, my time, and my place, I was a well-known football player,\u201d he says. A Dallas resident for many years, he became a renowned skeet shooter and a member of the National Skeet Shooting Association Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bates<\/a>
Bates football players do preseason drills at Camp Wonalancet in Eaton Center, N.H., circa September 1940. (Photograph by Richard Bowers Oliver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tops among his memories of Wonalancet was the great Hurricane of 1938, which swept through New Hampshire on Sept. 21. The cabins had tin roofs, and as the wind blew and branches rained down on the cabins, \u201cit sounded like mortar rounds,\u201d Topham recalls. He would know, having served as a Marine in the Pacific during the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the hurricane, practice the next morning was postponed because \u201cthere were big timbers on the fields,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had to move all that trash off the fields before we could practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topham says he moved into the starting lineup during the first game that year as Bates was getting hammered by Dartmouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recalls the Bates coach, Dave Morey, yelling at no one in particular: \u201cSomebody get me a tackle! Somebody do something.\u201d Except he was \u201ca little more profane than that. After that, I played.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bates<\/a>
Bates football players relax in the lodge of Camp Wonalancet in Eaton Center, N.H. during their preseason training, circa September 1940. (Photograph by Richard Bowers Oliver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Among his teammates, Art Belliveau \u201941 “was the one of the sharpest guys who ever hit the ground.” The four-year standout in football, basketball, and baseball was an “athlete of the highest order.\u201d Belliveau, who died in 2015, later coached and served as director of athletics at Edward Little High School in Auburn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belliveau was the best, but as a group, the Bates backs didn\u2019t mesh, Topham said, a requirement in the old single-wing offense where four backs needed to work well together. One back was so vain he refused to wear thigh pads so he\u2019d look slimmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was dissension,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019m just a tackle. All I did was play football. I didn\u2019t get into the bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with archival footage, 96-year-old Al Topham \u201941 recalls circa 1939 football training at a New Hampshire boys camp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":103264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[10875],"class_list":["post-103254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103254"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159781,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103254\/revisions\/159781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}