Ball Carrying Made Easy: An Insight on High School Football for Fans, Players and Coaches

Canton, Ohio: Standard Printing Company, 1935. Hardcover. Good. Red cloth with black lettering and front cover pictorial. Cloth is worn; corners exposed; biopredation holes near bottom of front outer hinge; general soiling. Bit of a smoky odor. Some pages show heavy foxing. Approximately 70 illustrations, mostly photographs of McKinley High School players and about a dozen play diagrams. 241 pages. Three copies located on OCLC (Oberlin College, U. of Akron, West Chester Univ.). A rare copy of Jim Aiken's football coaching guide. Aiken was one of Ohio's most respected coaches of the 1920s and 1930s. He imparts methods of successful coaching, addressing team dynamics, psychology, strategy, and a broad range of other issues and topics that coaches encounter with their teams. His 1934 state champion team at Canton's McKinley High School are used throughout to illustrate his principles, effectively creating a tribute to his McKinley teams in the years 1932-1934. James Wilson ''Jim'' Aiken (1899-1961) was also head football coach at the University of Akron (1936-1938), the University of Nevada (1939-1946), and the University of Oregon (1947-1950). Ball Carrying Made Easy was published following his successful career as a high school coach in Ohio, having coached Findlay High School (1924-1926, state champion 1925 ), at Scott High School in Toledo (1926-1931, joint state champion 1927), and at McKinley High School in Canton (1932-1935, state champion 1934). The introduction was written by Clayton G. Horn, an influential sportswriter with The Canton Repository.