Sand and Grit

The toughest opposition facing the football team at Fort Meade High, east of Tampa, Fla., is not another football team but a sand hill. Stealing a trick from Australian Miler Herb Elliott, who trains by running up dunes, Football Coach Bill Humphrey and his assistants at Fort Meade put grit in their squad by sending the boys up and down the steep slopes of nearby Sand Mountain. Between their dashes up the mountain and their dashes down it the young football players scrimmage along the way—a surcease from climbing that some find almost restful.

PHOTO

BURTON MCNEELY