Evert unfair dodge and trick which a boy exhibits is instantly stopped, and the men are urged to play perfectly straight, honest ball. Such a thing as slugging, therefore, is unknown. The same thing is done in the baseball season. This year Ward, the Princeton player, went to the school to teach mathematics. He was the Latin salutatorian of his class last year, and won the Fellowship in Mathematics, besides being considered the brightest man Princeton has graduated in fifteen years. He is to help the Lawrenceville students in football and baseball just as Street is doing.
Now the point of this recital is to show that Lawrenceville has at present on its pedagogic staff representatives of five large college teams, each one of whom is known as well for the honesty as for the quality of the game he played on the field. I believe that the future of our college athletics rests with the schools that are this year, and next year, and so on, sending out to the larger institutions men who will control the athletic organizations. Boys who learn bad tricks in schools will play them in a more outlandish and stronger way when they reach college teams. I believe, therefore, that it is the duty of schoolmasters to see to it that their wards are instructed in the ethics of sport as well as in the rule of three; for boys who have been left to themselves to learn, and have learned to win by unfair means, will turn out badly, as far as their future in athletics is concerned, and they may then justly look back to their school days, and blame those whose duty it was to teach them the truth of sport. Beneath the surface of these words are a wanting and a suggestion which I sincerely trust may be heeded and accepted.
It is pleasant to learn that all the world is not hunting after medals, and that the spirit of true sportsmanship is still alive in the land—even if it is in the minority! As a consequence of my sermons of the last few weeks I have received a number of letters. One correspondent says: "I won a swimming match once, and got a ribbon for it, and I prize that just as highly as though it were a gold medal. I think the old Grecian and Roman method of awarding wreaths a striking lesson for this age, and I hope they will play a prominent part in the forth-coming Olympian games."
The poor showing made by the Cambridge Manual-Training School team this fall was largely due to poor management. They had for manager and coach a graduate who knew nothing of football nor of training a team. As a consequence, they went into the games a pitifully overworked and spiritless set, depending upon fantastic tricks to win victories. The futility of it caused the appointment of a coach who had played football and understood the game. It was too late, however, to do any better than tie the demoralized Cambridge High team in the Thanksgiving-day game.
Owing to a delay in the receipt of the photographs, the announcement of the All-New-York interscholastic football team has been necessarily postponed until next week.
The Graduate.