Next in importance to mowing is rolling. A lawn-roller need not be a large one, but its use should not be spared, and while the ground is soft in the spring the court should be rolled a little almost every day. On one day roll the lawn from end to end, and on the next roll it from side to side. But in spite of the most careful mowing and rolling, weeds will appear on every lawn, and if they are not attended to at once they will multiply so rapidly that the entire sodding will have to be torn up again and relaid. A very good way, in the spring, is to call in a couple of small boys and set them to work at pulling up weeds. The twenty-five or fifty cents that the small boys will consider ample payment for their labors is nothing compared to the nuisance and annoyance that weeds might cause later in the season. Recognizing this fact, it might be well, if the boys proved efficient as weed-pullers, to have them come in throughout the playing season, every fortnight or so, and thus keep the court in good condition.
In this Department last year, at just about this season, were printed a couple of paragraphs telling of the construction of dirt and clay courts; it seems, therefore, unnecessary to return to that subject again this summer; but any of the readers of the Department who desire information on that subject may obtain it by addressing the Editor. It is not always possible, as I have said before, to answer by letter the many inquiries that come to this Department, but correspondents may feel assured that sooner or later their questions, if they are of general interest to sportsmen, will be answered here.
Conger. Walsh. Bannister (Capt.).
Dannatt. Armstrong. Mongovern. Davis. Flournoy. Whitson. Kelster.
Carmichael. Berrien. Lake. Van Allen. Holmes. Lachmund.
THE CLINTON, IOWA, HIGH-SCHOOL TRACK-ATHLETIC TEAM.
The Clinton High-School track-athletic team, a picture of which is given on another page, is the champion of the Iowa State High-School A.A., having taken the greatest number of points again this year at their annual field-meeting. One of the most promising of the young athletes in the group is Flournoy, who came on with the Iowa team to the National Games, and participated in the high jump. Since the formation of the National Association there has been a great boom in track athletics in many of the Western States, where hitherto the interest had been more or less desultory, especially among the graduates, and without graduate interest little can be done by the young sportsmen themselves. Now, however, it looks as if Iowa and Wisconsin, and Ohio and Minnesota were in a fair way to develop strong school athletes, and within the next year or so these lads will surely become a factor in the interscholastic athletic development of this country.
While it is perhaps a little early to begin the discussion of football, it is not out of place to call the attention of captains to the fact that the University Athletic Club has revised the rules of the game, and that in all probability this fall their code will be accepted by all the colleges in the country. Last year, as we all remember, there were two or three sets of rules, and Harvard played one way, while Yale played another way, and when matches were arranged between colleges that had early in the season adopted varying regulations, it was first necessary for the managers to meet and decide upon what should be considered fair ruling in the proposed match.
Now this is done away with, and a new code has been accepted—a code that I feel sure will be better than anything we have had before. For the best heads evolved it, and the idea of the committee representing the University Athletic Club was to do away with the worst features of roughness in the game, at the same time retaining the science and the keen edge of the sport.
These rules may not yet have been published, but I should advise every school football captain to inform himself concerning this, and to secure a copy of the book as soon as possible, in order that when he gets back to the gridiron he may be familiar with the changes and innovations that have been made, and thus gain time which must be spent in the study of the rules.
No captain can be efficient unless he has the rules of the game at his fingers' ends; not only the general rules, but the various interpretations that can be put on points that only come up perhaps once in a season, but which often cause long delays and discussions when they do crop up, and the captains and umpires are uninformed concerning the penalties required.