Even This Navy Is Calling Up Its Reserves

Preparing for today’s Army-Navy game, Navy Coach George Chaump said Thursday: “From a coaching perspective, you really don’t have time to get into an emotional state. We’ve been locked in our rooms looking at films. So in terms of what we’re doing, it’s pretty much the same--only more intense.”

Still, Chaump somehow found a moment to create one emotional weapon.

He told David Ginsburg of the Associated Press that he’ll fill his kickoff return unit with members of the Naval Academy’s plebe team, which went 4-0 this year.

Said Chaump: “They earned it. They deserved it. Nothing is better than giving them their baptism in the biggest game of their life, and that’s the Army-Navy game. I think they’ll be excited and do a great job, and it will give them a shot of confidence when they come back in the spring and fall. They’ll play like they’re veterans.”

Add Chaump: Earlier this season, before the first-year Navy coach faced Notre Dame, he told Barry Cronin of the Chicago Sun-Times about an episode in 1968, when he and Irish Coach Lou Holtz were assistants under Woody Hayes at Ohio State.

Before playing Purdue, which had won its previous game against the Buckeyes by 40 points, Chaump said Holtz told another Ohio State assistant: “We’re going to shut them out.”

The assistant bet Holtz a dollar, laying him 100-1, that Purdue would score at least one point. Final score: Ohio State 13, Purdue 0.

Said Chaump: “Lou put the $100 bill in a frame. He always was one for bargains. He’s the kind of guy who can fall in a manure heap and come out with a diamond ring.”

Trivia time: After Yale, with 100, which school has had the most consensus All-American football selections?

Jumping mad: Ric Desotell, coach of the La Canada Ribet Academy eight-person football team, can’t understand why his kicker, Kate Stoll, was left off the 1990 All-Heritage League team.

The Fighting Frogs are the only team in the league that kicks extra points, Desotell said. The others go for two points.

Last year, as a junior, Stoll kicked five extra points and made the all-league first team. This year, after kicking six, she didn’t even make the second team.

Said Desotell: “The other kickers just made it for their kickoffs. I find that astounding.”

Bring on the Kings: When the National Hockey League announced Thursday that in 1992 it would add an Ottawa team, to be called the Senators, the phone started ringing off the hook--in the offices of the Ottawa Senators, a team in the Central Junior Hockey League.

Peter Hudson, general manager of the junior team, told AP his staff had a busy day, adding: “And we’re not even in the phone book.”

Prolific heights: According to the Guinness Book of World Records, UCLA redshirt center Mike Lanier and his brother, Jim, who plays for the University of Denver, are the world’s tallest living identical male twins at 7-feet-6.

Also according to the Guinness book, University of Virginia basketball players Heather and Heidi Burge, at 6-4 3/4, are the world’s tallest living identical female twins.

The Lanier brothers went to Brother Rice High in Birmingham, Mich., the Burge sisters attended Palos Verdes High.

Trivia answer: Harvard, with 89. Notre Dame is third with 84.

Quotebook: Doug Kelly, media relations director for the Sacramento Surge of the World League of American Football: “I guess when we sign our quarterback, he’ll be known as the Surge-on general.”