"But the aging men who played on the Holy Cross football team in 1969 understand what is happening more than most because they lived through something similar a half-century ago when their season was canceled after 90 players and coaches tested positive for hepatitis A. The ’69 Crusaders finished 0-2 and spent the balance of their season quarantined in Hanselman Hall near the top of Pakachoag Hill. For many, it meant their final days of football were erased by a virus.
Holy Cross was still a Division 1 football school in 1969, annually scheduling the likes of Syracuse, Rutgers, and Boston College. The Crusaders had a new coach and high hopes when they went through workouts late in the summer of 1969, and they put up a decent battle, losing their opener, 13-0, at Harvard Sept. 27.
“It felt like our feet were stuck in the mud in that game,’’' recalled running back Eddie Jenkins, who went on to become a member of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins before he started his own law practice in Boston (Jenkins’s Holy Cross roommate was the infamous Ted Wells). “We should have been much better that day. Harvard was not that much faster than us.’’
“I remember going to the infirmary and getting a blood test and then getting on the bus to Dartmouth,’’ added DeSaulniers.
Tom Lamb, a senior captain from Western Mass. who later gained fame as Doug Flutie’s Natick High School football coach, said, “We got up there on Friday night and guys were getting sick during dinner and we were sending them home. Everyone was wondering what was up. I was a fullback, but our tailback was sent home so they called me into a coaches’ meeting and told me I’d be playing tailback instead of fullback.’’
Dartmouth beat a woozy Holy Cross team, 38-6."
[I played in that game, and had to get a shot the next Monday. Every Dartmouth player who had to get a shot (everyone who played) can remember those very long needles and painful shot. Even the guys with dementia and CTE. Joke. No one has CTE, and only one got dementia, at this point. He just died.]
Dan Shaughnessy, “HC football once lost season to a virus,” Boston Globe, 3/28/2020, at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/28/sports/1969-holy-cross-football-team-lost-its-season-virus/
Holy Cross was still a Division 1 football school in 1969, annually scheduling the likes of Syracuse, Rutgers, and Boston College. The Crusaders had a new coach and high hopes when they went through workouts late in the summer of 1969, and they put up a decent battle, losing their opener, 13-0, at Harvard Sept. 27.
“It felt like our feet were stuck in the mud in that game,’’' recalled running back Eddie Jenkins, who went on to become a member of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins before he started his own law practice in Boston (Jenkins’s Holy Cross roommate was the infamous Ted Wells). “We should have been much better that day. Harvard was not that much faster than us.’’
“I remember going to the infirmary and getting a blood test and then getting on the bus to Dartmouth,’’ added DeSaulniers.
Tom Lamb, a senior captain from Western Mass. who later gained fame as Doug Flutie’s Natick High School football coach, said, “We got up there on Friday night and guys were getting sick during dinner and we were sending them home. Everyone was wondering what was up. I was a fullback, but our tailback was sent home so they called me into a coaches’ meeting and told me I’d be playing tailback instead of fullback.’’
Dartmouth beat a woozy Holy Cross team, 38-6."
[I played in that game, and had to get a shot the next Monday. Every Dartmouth player who had to get a shot (everyone who played) can remember those very long needles and painful shot. Even the guys with dementia and CTE. Joke. No one has CTE, and only one got dementia, at this point. He just died.]
Dan Shaughnessy, “HC football once lost season to a virus,” Boston Globe, 3/28/2020, at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/28/sports/1969-holy-cross-football-team-lost-its-season-virus/
