Good morning!
It’s not often I get to play editor, but when Jamin Hemenway and Charlie Olchowski both emailed me about writing a story for this space I said sure, why not.

Both are Franklin County natives, and both are Deerfield Academy grads. Jamin’s been to most of the Division 1 college football venues in America and writes a blog called pigskinpursuit.com. He’d gone to the Army-Navy game and wanted to write about it.

Charlie was motivated by the recent passing of actor Ryan O’Neal who starred in the 1970 film “Love Story” with Ali McGraw. O’Neal’s character went to Harvard and played on the hockey team. Charlie and others on the real teams were cast as O’Neal’s teammates.

Both submissions were over a thousand words, but an editor’s job is to pull out the chainsaw and cut them down to size. Years ago a Boston Globe columnist wrote, “People who don’t write for a living think writing is easy.”

My job was to make Hemenway and Olchowski read like Hemingway and Dostoevsky, but dollars to donuts they’ll think their version was better.

Oh well. Here goes.

By: Jamin Hemenway

Gillette Stadium is 79 miles from my house in Manchester, N.H., and the allure was too much to resist. This would be my second Army-Navy game, the first was in 2012.  

On the way south I stopped at Pete’s Roast Beef in Woburn and ordered a super beef three way— roast beef piled between a crispy onion roll slathered in tangy James River BBQ with mayo and cheese.

I was pleasantly surprised to cruise into Foxborough with relative ease. At a stoplight on Patriot Place, I chatted up a cop who was directing traffic and told him it was my first visit to Gillette Stadium. When I jokingly asked him if there was any free parking, his supervisor overheard me and waved me into an open stretch of grass on the side of the road.

Another officer wrote my license plate and phone number into his notebook and told me I was lucky and I “must really know somebody.” (Ed. Note— Hemenway’s the head of U.S. marketing for Lindt Chocolate and may have bribed both cops with truffles.)

My creed’s always been to show up empty-handed. I’ve never bought tickets in advance or gone to the box office. I try to avoid scalpers but have never been shut out of a game. There’s always tickets, even for an Army-Navy game.

After a few minutes with a lone finger thrust in the air, a middle-aged man with his family in tow came over and said he was trying to unload a ticket for a friend.

After a brief back and forth we agreed on $100 for a $300 field level ticket on the 10 yard line. I forked over five crisp $20’s and he emailed me the ticket.

I quickly remembered why I loathe digital tickets. It wouldn’t download off the email so I had to log into Ticketmaster, the undisputed king of price gouging, and create an account on the spot. When it still wouldn’t download I walked over to a kiosk where a Ticketmaster rep was able to find it, download it and send me through the turnstile.

When I went to my section a heavyset guy who was decked out in Army gear was in my seat. It turned out we had identical tickets so I found another seat and prayed no one would show up and claim it. 

It was turning out to be one of those days until I spotted a woman holding an envelope full of standard paper tickets. She said her group hadn’t shown up so I asked her if I could have one for a souvenir and she gave it to me. 

Over at the concession stand I paid $6 for popcorn and $9 for a soda in a souvenir cup. It may seem odd, but I have over 100 different souvenir cups from college football venues across the country. When friends come over to the ManCave I open the cupboard and tell them to find their favorite team.

The stadium was boisterous. Kids were crawling over tanks, helicopters, and artillery pieces parked on the concourse, and ruby-cheeked cadets in their military best were posing for photos with their proud parents.

Just before kickoff Navy jets performed a flyover and Army helicopters thumped closely behind them with crewmen’s legs dangling off the open tailgate. Afterward parachutists from both sides services landed near the 50-yard line.

Fireworks shot into the gray overcast sky and cannon blasts reverberated throughout the stadium. It was an American spectacle you’ll never see anywhere else in the world. 

I was next to the Army cadets and their energy was palpable. They roared whenever a Black Knight made a key play, and moved and bobbed in unison as “Tsunami” crackled over the loudspeaker.

Late in the game an Army linebacker named Kalib Fortner stripped the ball away from Navy’s quarterback and rumbled 44 yards into the end zone. The swirling gray mass of cadets exploded and caps flew in the air. Army held on to win, 17-11, and the Cadets solemnly sang their alma mater and piled onto the field to celebrate.

The cops were gone by the time I got back to my car. I pulled onto Route 1 and reached into the cooler for the super beef three-way I’d saved for the ride home.

Foreword: Charlie’s a Greenfield attorney, home brewer and fly fisherman. He played for the Lunt Silver Blades hockey team and befriended Cale Makar’s family when they came to watch him at UMass.

By: Charlie Olchowski    

The lead character in “Love Story” was Oliver Barrett IV, a Harvard student and hockey player. When the film crew arrived on campus they put out the call for real hockey players and we got to see too much of Ryan O’Neal and not enough of Ali McGraw.

The scenes were used several of us and we found out how long it takes to make one scene.

The scenes were shot at Watson Rink which is now the Bright-Landry Hockey Center and the games were against Dartmouth and Cornell. Their athletic departments let us borrow the jerseys, but with one stipulation. If and when the scoreboard was shown, Dartmouth and Cornell both insisted they’d have the lead.

Freshman coach Bill Cleary was Ryan O’Neal’s stand-in and wore a wig to match O’Neal’s curly locks. Ten years earlier, Bill and his brother Bob Cleary both helped the U.S. beat the Russians to win the gold in the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe).

O’Neal could barely stand on the ice and by the end of the shoot had worn out his skates’ leather uppers. He never said a word to us, just kept his distance.

The longest day we spent filming was the Dartmouth game when Jenny comes down from the crowd and asks Oliver why he’s in the penalty box.

The scene was shot from about six different angles and and distances, each with multiple takes. All the while we had to keep skating and passing and shooting the puck off the boards for ambient background noise.

We sat around between takes, cold and bored, and that night they sent a catering service to feed us in the Dillon Field House. Afterward we went in the the gym which was wall-to-wall lockers and benches. We were tired and cranky and couldn’t believe the time it was taking to film only a minute or two of the movie.

Inevitably we talked about Ryan O’Neal. It was “locker room talk” filled with plenty of profanity about how he was such a jerk. Dave Hynes and Bobby McManama who later played for the Whalers were sitting away from us near the last row of lockers.

‘Whatdya think of O’Neal?” one of us yelled.

“He’s all right, nice guy,” mumbled Hynes

“Yeah,” I yelled. “Bull——!”

When I got up to leave I walked past them and turned the corner and there was O’Neal, face down and trying to sleep. Well, that ended any hope we’d ever get invited to his Hollywood bungalow.

When the movie came out we were invited to the premiere at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline that was owned by Sumner Redstone. None of the stars were there, only Paramount executives and Boston’s upper crust.

I failed to bring a hanky, I’d come for the hockey. There’s a scene where Oliver’s skating up ice and a Dartmouth defenseman is skating backward. It’s a head shot and his face fills the right side of the frame. As Oliver’s coming toward the Harvard goal, the film shows me wearing No. 3.

I know it was me because they shot that scene 10 times. I’d made the final cut.

RIP Ryan O’Neal. Wherever you are up there, I hope you’re on a beach or getting skating lessons.

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com