The choice of officials at the National Games is another subject which will bear discussion, and although I have reserved it until the last, it must not be considered that this is because I have considered it of any less importance than the various subjects connected with these games that have been discussed within the past few weeks in this Department. All who regularly attend interscholastic track and field games, especially graduates of the New York schools, and those who watch their young brothers and cousins in their indulgence in sport, were much surprised when they looked over the programme of the National Games and saw the list of men who had been invited to act as officials.
There is a certain number of gentlemen in this city who have become so thoroughly identified with school-boy sports that their names are always to be found on the list of officials at interscholastic games. At the National Games, however, it was different, and there are many who resented the change.
In the first place, school sports—and college sports, for that matter—are supposed to be somewhat different in tone from other sports, even from those of amateur athletic associations. We try to conduct them on a higher plane, and we try to give to them a purer spirit of amateurism and comradeship than can be obtained by other organizations. And in carrying out this idea it has always been the custom to have school or college graduates act as officials.
At the National Games this unwritten law or custom was not carried out, and many of the New York school-boys felt that the visiting athletes were receiving a wrong impression of the way in which we do things down here. Many questioned me concerning the change that they noticed on the first page of the programme, but being no wiser than they at the time, I was unable to enlighten them. Since then, however, I have learned that the change was due to ignorance on the part of the managers of the day rather than to any desire for reform.
INTERSCHOLASTIC RECORDS OF THE UNITED STATES.
| Event. | Maker. | ||||
| 100-yard dash | 10-1/5 | sec. | F. H. Bigelow. | ||
| 220-yard run | 22-2/5 | " | F. H. Bigelow. | ||
| 440-yard run | 50-3/5 | " | T. E. Burke. | ||
| Half-mile run | 2 | m. | 1-1/5 | " | R. H. Hanson. |
| Mile run | 4 | " | 32-2/5 | " | W. T. Laing. |
| Mile walk | 7 | " | 11-3/5 | " | J. S. Eells. |
| 120-yard hurdle (3 ft. 6 in.) | 17 | " | E. C. Perkins. | ||
| 220-yard hurdle (2 ft. 6 in.) | 26½ | " | E. D. Field. | ||
| Mile bicycle | 2 | " | 34-1/5 | " | I. A. Powell. |
| Two-mile bicycle | 5 | " | 18-2/5 | " | G. F. Baker, Jun. |
| Running high jump | 5 | ft. | 11 | in. | S. A. W. Baltazzi. |
| Running broad jump | 21 | " | 7 | " | A. Cheek. |
| Pole vault | 10 | " | 9 | " | B. Johnson. |
| Throwing 12-lb. hammer | 125 | " | R. T. Johnson. | ||
| Throwing 16-lb. hammer | 118 | " | 2¾ | " | F. C. Ingalls. |
| Putting 12-lb. shot | 42 | " | 5½ | " | Patterson. |
| Putting 16-lb. shot | 39 | " | 3 | " | M. C. O'Brien. |