"I played with "Off-Campus" for both the 1963 and 1964 seasons (though I was living in Lyons in 1964, but they had no team, and the "commissioner", Nappy Napolitano told me to just pick a team.). I do not recall that the Off-Campus team won the championship. I do recall that the team was coached by an injured ND player, Jim Rakers, who was from Illinois. I also recall that the "playing fields", which served as the parking lots for the Saturday ND games, were treacherous to life and limb (rocks, broken bottles, cans, etc.)!

Lyons combined with Morrissey in two years that I do remember. I think that was 1966 and 1967. (I had graduated in 1967, but was in graduate school there.) I have the Lyons championship trophy still--and will look at the dates. I remember we played that championship on the ND practice field--after a small snow storm. The final was 19-6--and I suffered a cut on my hand in the first quarter that took a lot of talking to the assigned doctor there to let me keep on playing! After the game, I received 7 stitches--and had to walk to and from the hospital! I also remember that we received the trophy at the half time of a ND basketball game--and we were booed quite generously. By the way, the co-captain of that team was Dan Lungren--who went out to politics in California serving as a U.S. representative and later a candidate for governor."

"Here's what I don't remember:

--who won the championship: no idea--Keenan, my dorm, didn't;

--any individual game.

Here's what I can:

-Leather helmets: We got mostly handed-down varsity equipment from the late '50's, early '60's, often with player names written inside. Some but not all of us got leather helmets--the equipment was mostly out of date, even for the time. I kept a leather helmet as a souvenir, which wound up fittingly being gnawed to unrecognizability by one of my sons' dog. (Made that up--no idea what happened to it.) Shoulder pads were also old but basically worked.

-Fields: At the time the edge of campus ended at the circle at the end of Notre Dame Avenue. The area across ND Ave from the Morris Inn, now occupied by the Hesburgh Center and McKenna Hall, among other buildings, was an open field, semi-maintained with a lot of dirt patches. That was where Interhall Football was played...and baseball, too, I believe.

- Class segregation: The Eastern Division was all freshman dorms. At the time frosh were segregated from upperclassmen, on the misguided notion that we needed a transition year and should be protected from corrupting influences. That was the Stanford and Keenan opened. (Personally, I was delighted to leave home--the generation gap was a real thing in my family.)

So the West Division was dorms with sophomores and up, and most off campus students were seniors or locals. It mostly took 2 dorms to raise enough players for 1 team They sure scored a lot more.

--Competitiveness: players hit hard, were eager to play but we got little practice time. A fair number of plays were made up in the huddle. From all the 0's in the scores you can gather most freshman games were 'defensive struggles.' My recollection is most teams only had 2 or 3 guys who blocked worth a lick, and 'chunk' plays were almost nonexistent.

There were a fair number who had been decent high school players, even a handful who tried to walk on the varsity and got cut. I was the fastest guy who turned out for Keenan and liked to hit. So naturally I got playing time, and plenty of bruises and 2-yard gains.

I wound up playing Interhall for other dorms through my junior year and remember 2 plays in 3 years...a forearm shiver with my right thumb raised to fend off a block while playing db, which left me with with an enlarged sore and now arthritic knuckle, and in another game catching a screen pass with an open field I'd not seen before and, as I turned, being hit very hard by one of our lineman who was sprinting all out to block the guy 2 steps behind me, the only defender in a position to prevent a long gain. Result: loss of 3 and a severely sprained ankle that's been weak ever since.

Can't remember the name of single player from champ Stanford. A guy named Denny Emmanuel, a lefty QB, purportedly all-state in Iowa, played, I think, for either Zahm (2-2-1) or Cavanaugh (3-2)."

I recall that it was great fun and I do recall being the placekicker with a long field goal during a game while playing for Keenan Hall in 1964. Other than that, and the theft of the square toed Rawlins Kangaroo skin football shoes I had, I don’t recall much of my interhall football days. Interhall football was a wonderful way to get to know the other freshman guys in our hall and on our team, especially those who lived on other floors. As I vaguely recall, we may have had as many as 20 players. I know it was not more than twenty-two, because if we had that many I never would have been given the opportunity to play both offense and defense. In all my high school football I never played a down on defense. That made playing linebacker on the interhall team that much more fun.

My roommate senior year (1967-68) was Steve Anderson who wrote the article that mentioned my name and the field goal. Steve has never let me forget that.

Our Rector, Rev. Michael Heppen, became a life-long friend of mine during that year and later befriended our daughter “Boo” Withers, Notre Dame Class of 1997. Our youngest granddaughter, Mary Heppen Beckstoffer, is named for him.