Don McCain

It is unlikely that any football team in the country closed the season with as splendid a triumph as did the squad shown above with their trophy football. They are the Rams of the Crippled Children's Hospital and School of Sioux Falls, S.D., a nimble ball club which crushed a team made up of Don Miller and Jim Crowley—two of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen—and four professional coaches. The now-famous passing combination of Quarterback Randy Peterson (second from left) to speedy right end Walter DeMarrias (extreme left) was in large measure responsible for the 12-6 upset. But, as they say on the sports pages, the lopsided score was not indicative of the aggressive play by the always spirited, if hopelessly outclassed, losers.

The pro-opposition met the children on even terms: they played the game from wheelchairs and scooters, which is the only way the children can move around. The game was the idea of Don McCain, a 35-year-old educator who is the hospital-school's physical education director. McCain has organized over a dozen sports from table tennis and archery to swimming and volley ball. "Sports competitions are a fine physical and emotional experience for many of them, and it is something they can follow all their lives." The children get so caught up that they have organized their own cheering sections and their confidence runs high. "You know," said an eighth-grader after the football game, "if we did this more often I bet we could beat anybody."

PHOTO

TOM JELLEMA