One of the new Milwaukee rules provides that "the principal of the school, or persons authorized by him, shall be the manager or managers of the teams representing the school." This is not a desirable change. It is always best for schoolboys to manage their own sports, and if it is found that they cannot or will not manage them properly and honestly and in a sportsmanlike manner, then it is time for older heads to take a hand in the proceedings. But even then it is not advisable to have head masters as managers.
It is far better to let graduates of the school act as an advisory board, and to empower graduates with sufficient power to control the actions of the undergraduate managers. It is hardly possible to find any school principal who can understand and be in thorough sympathy with the boys in their athletics. A schoolmaster is bound to look at things from a different point of view from his pupils, and he would naturally try to reach an end, doubtless for good, in an entirely different way from that which will appeal to the students.
On the other hand, graduates of the school, who are no longer affected by the influences of active personal competition in sport, can better understand the methods and feelings of the students and the requirements of school athletics. They are closer to the boys than the professor can possibly be, and they naturally inspire more confidence in the younger men, because the latter feel that these graduates have a livelier personal interest in sport itself than an older man can have, who has probably never participated in any of these games. Furthermore, a number of these graduates, who might be called upon as advisers, are probably in college or have been through college, and have there acquired much valuable experience in the conduct and management of athletics of all kinds.
One of the chief elements to do away with in the management of sports, especially where reforms are being undertaken, is friction; and there is bound to be more or less friction between head master and pupils, because their chief relations are so entirely different from the new ones that are being inaugurated through athletics.
Among other suggestions proposed at the time these rules were adopted at the Milwaukee schools was one that certain changes be made in the football-playing rules. Fortunately, however, there was enough good sense in the committee to overcome this proposition, and it was decided that the intercollegiate football rules were plenty good enough for Milwaukee.
A new departure in interscholastic sport is to be made by the East Side High-School of Milwaukee this spring. It intends to put a crew on the water. A number of men are already in training, and a racing-shell has been secured. If an eight is eventually turned out, it will be the first crew that ever represented a high-school in the West, and, so far as I know, the first that ever represented any high-school in this country.
No particular progress has been made so far in the arrangements for the Knickerbocker in-door games. It is probable that there will be a relay-race for "juniors," which is an absurd and unnecessary event, as most of these "junior" events are. If a boy is too young to compete in the regular events at an athletic meeting, he is too young to go into active competition at all, and it will do him more harm than good to train at that age. I hope to see the day when these "junior" events will be entirely done away with, and when boys under sixteen years of age will be discouraged from competition with older lads. These youngsters have plenty of time ahead of them, and their constitutions will be much the better for it if they postpone athletic work until their muscles are better able to stand the exertion.
A very good change that is to be inaugurated at these games is the adoption of the regulation high hurdles—3 ft. 6 in.—instead of the dwarfed obstacles that the New York I.S.A.A. has hitherto favored.
It is reported that the Harvard School will apply for readmission to the New York Interscholastic League this spring. It is to be hoped that there will be no opposition to this request, for it would be unjust to keep a body of young men from participation in interscholastic sport because of the mistakes of some misguided youths who attended the school before they did, and for whose actions they should never, of course, be held responsible.
Just as we are about to go to press I am informed that the Connecticut Interscholastic Association has decided not to divide up the $400 surplus remaining in the treasury after the football season. The officers of that Association are to be congratulated upon this action. They will no doubt eventually realize that they have done much for the good of amateur sport in Connecticut by keeping the money question as far away as possible from athletic competition.