Netters:
The Rockford "doping" story reminds me of something that happened in
NJ many years ago.
This was in the late 30s. There is a school in jersey City
called Ferris and it was then only a few years from its foundation. The
ruling football power in the area then was Dickinson which literally
overshadowed the new school--being situated on a hill directly above the
site of the newer school. There was also an "arrangment" by which the
industrial course at ferris was only for two years so the students then had
to transfer to Dickinson. (The second oldest school in the city, Lincoln,
had no industrial course at all with the results that promising football
prospects could enroll at Dickinson as industrial students, then switch to
any course they wished and remain there.
The first football coach at Ferris was Lou Lepis, who had three
times won the National AAU 35-pound weight title while a student at
Manhattan College. He was a man much admired by everyone who knew
him---including my wife who once worked for him in the JC Department of
Recreation and, believe me, when she approves of someone, he has to be the
real goods.
Around 1934 or so, a new class entered Ferris with some very
promising athletes. Eiether they took other course or were persuaded to
switch from industrial so that the team could be held together.
Now what does this have to do with the present Rockford situation?
Well, these athletes became known as the "cod liver oil" boys. Worried about
the nutrition they were receiving at home, Lou would jhave them come to his
office each school day and give them cod liver oil pills, then believed to
me (and maybe this is true, for all I know) a way of building their bodies.
Whatever, it worked and they had a great junior year and seemed headed for a
county and possible state group title the next year. The fly in the ointment
proved to be the loss of a star fullback who, as they used to say, "ran into
a shotgun: and had to drop out of school and get married.
Now this was a more relaxed age, long before "zero tolerance" was
invented, so there were no complaints or disciplinary actions. It was a sort
of "urban legend" which happened to be true. I was too young at the time to
know anything about it, but was told the story later by the same reporter
who was my mentor in track and field coverage. He had married into the
city's Italian American community, of which Mr. Lepis was a leading iocon,
and also worked for Lou as the publicist for the Department of Recreation.
It may be that there is more to the Rockford story than has been
revealed to date. But what I have read in the stories on the Dyestat site to
date sounds like "much ado about nothing." I know a coach here in NJ who had
to resign from his post at one school because he had given an ailing runner
an aspirin. A few years agoi, there was the case of aNJ college runner, who
was penalized (fortunately very lightly) because he had gone to a drug store
between heats and finals of the 1600M relay at the indoor USATF meet to get
something that would temporarily "dry up" a nagging cold.
In theological terms, we seem to be too often punishing the venial
sins and letting the mortal ones go undisturbed..
Ed Grant
