The Oakland High-School decided to-day that it would join the National League of High-Schools, and send a team to New York next year to join in the national High-School contests. The team will consist of ten of the best athletes in the school, and the boys anticipate being capable of holding their own and capturing some of the trophies. They have received much encouragement from the recent tour of the Berkeley team. The Oakland High-School has for some time been a member of the league of which Harper's Round Table is the organ, and now that they have decided to branch out and seek national honors, athletics will receive a boom, as there is much rivalry as to who will ultimately be the ones chosen to uphold the honor of Oakland's High-School in the Empire State. A general meeting will be held in a few days, and a manager will be elected who will at once put into practice all the available material. After that the boys will commence to obtain pledges for financial aid, as it will require about $1600 to defray the expenses of the trip. The next national High-School contests will be held in the summer; but entries are now being made, and Oakland will not be dilatory in outlining the events for which she will seek to carry off the honors. "The sending East of our team will be one of the best things that ever the High-School undertook," said one of the O.H.-S. athletes to-day. "It will call attention to our school and to Oakland, and will let thousands of people know that we exist who are in doubt just now as to where Oakland is. We have been debating the proposition of sending a team East all this year, but after we saw what a lot of attention was shown to the Berkeley team we could see no reason why we should not try a similar tour among the crack Eastern High-Schools. We do not anticipate any trouble in raising the necessary funds, as we think the noise we shall make will prove a very valuable advertisement for this city."
A good many of the statements made by the Call are inaccurate, but the main announcement, that the O.H.-S. will come East, is authentic. It behooves the Eastern sportsmen, therefore, to get ready to receive them. As I have said before, the Round Table will do everything in its power to further the organization of a National Association of the schools, and these columns are open to correspondents who care to make suggestions for the advancement of the scheme. Perhaps a better idea of what the Californians have actually done, and will do, can be obtained from this letter, which came to the Round Table from the Captain of the O.H.-S. athletic team:
"The newspaper reports are not at all accurate, but they will serve to show what we have been doing lately. While they do not convey the exact truth, they have aroused great enthusiasm among the Oakland people, and we have great hopes of taking an Eastern tour. We are only awaiting the formation of the Big League to go right to work, and we have a big job on hand. I suppose that the Field Day will be held about the latter part of June, and that the list of events will be made to coincide exactly with the Inter-collegiate programme. If we came East we could doubtless make arrangements for a series of dual games with three or four of the crack schools in the vicinity of New York in addition to the Big Field Day. Of course this could all be arranged later on; what we are worried about now is getting started. I wish you would prod the schools up and get them to take immediate action. We want to get to work right away, for to raise $3000 is quite a job. The U.C. boys are in favor of the trip, and will help us in every way. I wish you would inform us of any steps taken in this regard, and also put us in touch with the officers, so we could correspond with them. Would it be necessary to be the winning or champion team of our league to join in the Field Day, or could the O.H.-S. alone join the League and uphold the honor of California in the scholastic world in the East?"
It strikes me that the New York I.S.A.A. will lose an opportunity that may never offer again if it fails now to take the initiative in the formation and foundation of the National Interscholastic Athletic Association of America.
Lawrenceville opened last Thursday, and the football men went to work at once. Some of the old players got back a week earlier, and saw to it that the eight fields were put into shape and laid out, and now every afternoon one may see sixteen elevens hard at work rushing and kicking and otherwise developing new material. This system of requiring everybody to join in the game is an excellent one. The boys at Lawrenceville are arranged according to size, and are taught how to play, and thus it is plain that in the course of a year or two the Captain of the school team has plenty of good material to pick from. The first and second teams have the additional advantage of being coached by some of the instructors who were star football players in their college days, and the benefit of whose experience goes largely toward making the Lawrenceville eleven the successful one that it usually is.
Last year, for instance, Lawrenceville defeated the Hill School, 22-0, the Yale Freshmen, 16-0, and Andover, 20-6, besides disposing of every other school team they met. They tried to arrange a game with the Princeton 'Varsity, but were not successful, for the reason, they believe, that in 1893 they scored 4-8 on the orange and black champions. Of course this is probably not the reason, for Princeton should be only too glad to get such excellent practice even from a school team, and this year no doubt there will be a match, and another probably with the University of Pennsylvania.
A feature of the football record of this school, which it is pleasing to be able to call attention to, is that in the twelve years the game has been played there no dispute has ever arisen and no serious accident has occurred. Moreover, as far as I am able to ascertain, no boy ever went to the school because he could play football. All this tends to create a genuine and healthy interest in the sport, and not only the scholars themselves, but the graduates of the school take pride in such a record. This is shown by the fact that the Alumni have presented a $300 cup for class championship contests, each winning class getting its numeral engraved upon the trophy; and an alumnus has also offered a cup to be played for by the House teams, and to become the property of the House winning the greatest number of times within ten years. The boys live in Houses at Lawrenceville, as they do at Rugby and Harrow, and each House has its eleven.
Of last year's first school team five men return: Emerson, full-back; Dibble and Davis, half-backs; Cadwalader and Edwards, guards. This is a first-rate nucleus, and Dibble, the new Captain, is expected to bring forward a team equal, if not superior, to that of last year. There are few better half-backs in the schools than Dibble. He is a great sprinter, having covered the 100 in 10 seconds at the school games last June. Davis, the other half-back, and Emerson, the full-back, will surely improve this fall over their last year's style, while no better guards are necessary than Cadwalader and Edwards. They weigh 210 and 218 pounds respectively.
The candidates for end rush are Noble and Righter, and unless some new phenomenons develop, they will hold the positions. The tackles will have to be taken from the incoming classes, and the hardest position to fill will be quarter-back. Captain Dibble may well watch the play of the man in this position, if he expects the team to be engineered as well as De Saulles did it last year. De Saulles is a wonderful quarter-back, and will no doubt make the Yale 'Varsity in a year or so. A large number of new Fourth Form boys, or Seniors, have been entered this fall, and it will be strange if in a school of 350 enough available material cannot be trained to bring the eleven up to its usual standard of excellence.
The teams of the New England League are also in the field, and in a few days practice games between schools will begin. Boston Latin is scheduled to meet Charlestown High to-morrow, and English High meets Dorchester on the same day. There is unusual promise of good new material everywhere, and the championship matches ought to furnish good football. Only three members of the Cambridge Manual Training School's champion eleven are back this fall, and the candidates for positions are mostly small, light men. Captain Murphy, however, has signified his intention of trying to make up for the probable lightness of his team by perfecting it in team work.