TRACK ATHLETICS.
Track Athletics at Yale started in 1872, about the time that the first intercollegiate athletic meetings were being held in Saratoga. Yale sent two representatives, born athletes devoid of instruction, to the intercollegiate meetings of ’74 and ’75, who won a first prize apiece each year. Fall games were started at Yale in 1875, and were an unqualified success, the most interesting event being the running high jump of Gale, ’78 S., who cleared 5 ft. 3 in., pronounced to be “the finest amateur jumping ever done in America.”
It is a curious commentary on the taste of this period that the hurdle and the one hundred yard races were regarded as tame, while a three or a seven mile walk was considered most interesting and exciting. The presentation of the Challenge Cup, valued at $500, now commonly known as the Mott Haven Cup, served as a great stimulus to track athletics in all the other prominent athletic colleges except Yale, whose apathy and indifference to this branch was so great that from 1877 till 1880 she sent no representatives to the meetings. In 1880 Mr. T. Dewitt Cuyler, of Yale, established a record of 4m. 37 3-5s. in the mile run, a record which was not broken for seven years. From 1880 on, Harvard continued to win the cup with an unvarying regularity, with Columbia a good second and Yale a poor third.
In 1882 one of Yale’s best runners appeared, Mr. H. S. Brooks, who won the intercollegiate 100 yards and 220 yards for two years, doing the 100 in 10 1-5s., and the 220 in 22 5-8s.
The famous 220 yards run between Brooks and W. Baker of Harvard, occurred in 1884, and was a magnificent exhibition of running, Baker winning in 22 2-5s.
In 1886 the contest for the cup between Yale and Harvard was most closely fought, resting as it did upon the decision in the 100 yards, which was, at any rate, a very difficult decision to make. It is hardly worth while to recount that Sherrill of Yale was cheered and congratulated as winner, or that the decision rested with one judge, a Harvard graduate, who alone, out of the three judges, witnessed the finish, for Yale lost the cup. The policy of Yale men after defeat has always been to make no excuses for failure, but to turn with greater determination to the work of retrieving the past by victory in the future.
Yale has had a large number of fine individual track athletes in the past two years, among them being Sherrill, ’89, amateur champion in 1887 for 100 yards, and easy winner this year in the intercollegiate 100 yards and 220 yards; Coxe, ’87, with his records of 101 ft. 1 in. in the hammer throw, and of 40 ft. 91⁄2 in. in putting the shot; Ludington, ’87, who has hurdled in 163⁄4s.; Harmar, ’90, who has run a mile in 4m. 32 2-5s., and Shearman, ’89, who jumps 21 ft. 71⁄2 in. in the broad jump, 5 ft. 81⁄2 in. in the high jump, and pole vaults 10 ft. 3 5-8 in.
To the fact that Yale had so many crack performers in 1887 was due her winning of the cup, aided by the fact that Harvard found very strong competition from the other colleges in her events. Yale lost the cup this year for the opposite reasons, having no luck in winning events, and having but three crack performers left. As to men of medium ability, Yale never possesses them, her success depending solely upon her first-class men. It is a notable commentary on the system of track athletics at Yale, that her three best performers this year won five first prizes, and that these were the only ones taken by Yale.
Until Yale follows in Harvard’s footsteps in training carefully and skilfully a large number of men for her athletic team she can never hope to compete on an equality with Harvard. And this will not be possible at Yale until greater interest is taken in this branch of athletics, and until the cup is valued as highly as a football championship or a Yale-Harvard race.