The particular favor with which football, baseball, and track athletics have always been regarded has not prevented a healthy interest in other sports. Though cricket and wicket died somewhere about 1872, for the Chronicle remarked in 1875 that not "even the ghost of a cricket bat" had been seen for two years, and football "was in its decline," baseball was exceedingly popular and a general interest in boating was developing which promised to "equal if not supplant it in popular favor." Shells were purchased, entertainments for the new Boating Association were given, and for a time the new sport flourished. But the nautical resources of the Huron and Whitmore Lake were all too slender and after a few years the enthusiasm died, though occasionally talk of a Varsity crew springs up.
Tennis came into vogue about 1880. An Association was established as early as 1883 and we have it, once more on the Chronicle's carefully qualified authority, that "athletics in general have given way to lawn tennis to a certain extent." The Tennis Association was merged, with the other separate athletic bodies, into the general Athletic Association in 1890, and by 1897 when Michigan first participated in the Western Inter-collegiate tennis matches, the members of the team were awarded the Varsity letter. Henry T. Danforth, '03; H.P. Wherry, '03; R.G. St. John, '06l, and Reuben G. Hunt, '06l, were members of the four teams which led the West in the years from 1901 to 1904, the last championship until 1919, when Walter Wesbrook, '21, captured the singles, and with Nicholas Bartz, Jr., '20, the doubles at Chicago.
The return to the Conference also gave a great impetus to the development of basket ball as a major sport. Though Michigan's first teams have not been remarkably successful, the players are now awarded the Varsity "M," and interest in the contests is growing rapidly, partly because the game itself is fast and exciting, demanding even greater quickness and stamina than football, and partly because the season fills in the interval between the end of the football and the opening of the baseball and track seasons in the spring. A swimming team has also been organized under a competent coach, but it is probable that no great progress will be made until the completion of the tanks in the Union and the Gymnasium.
The women of the University have not been far behind the men in the development of athletics. Not only have they always been loyal supporters of the University in inter-collegiate contests, but they have their own organized athletic interests which have been no small factor in the development of the distinctive life of the women in the University. This has come largely through Barbour Gymnasium, completed in 1897, and the Palmer Athletic Field for women, which was purchased some twelve years later.
The Gymnasium, as its name implies, was largely made possible through a gift of property in Detroit valued at $25,000, by the Hon. Levi L. Barbour, '63, '65l, of Detroit, Regent of the University from 1892 to 1898, and from 1902 to 1907. The building eventually cost $41,341.76, and includes not only the gymnasium proper, 100 by 90 feet, completely equipped, but also two large parlors and a series of offices, the headquarters of the Women's League, as well as a small auditorium and stage above, seating about 600 persons, named in honor of the President's wife "Sarah Caswell Angell Hall." Palmer Field was made possible through two gifts, the first of $1,500 from the Hon. Peter White, Regent from 1904 to 1908, and the second of $3,000 from ex-Senator T.W. Palmer, '49, of Detroit. It comprises a rolling six-acre tract, just south of the Observatory, and therefore within easy walking distance of the Gymnasium.
These gifts not only ensured systematic physical training for University women, but also quickly led to a broader interest in sports for women, as is shown by the pictures of three women's basket-ball teams in the 1903 Michiganensian. Since that time there has been a continuous and consistent development under competent instruction, with special emphasis placed on basket ball and such outdoor sports as cross-country walking, hockey, baseball, tennis, swimming, and archery, all of which are supported by a Women's Athletic Association. During the war also a drill company was organized under officers of the S.A.T.C.
In closing this review of the development of athletics in the University it may not be amiss to emphasize the fact that the present status of collegiate sport is not without its inconsistencies and dangers. There is real peril for mens sana in an overdeveloped corpore sano. The general and healthy interest in all forms of outdoor sport of earlier days has been all but lost in this era of specialization. Nowadays the Varsity team too often is far from being the apex of a pyramid whose foundations lie in a widely distributed and wholesome interest in sports for their own sake. Too often we have the spectacle of high-school students coming to our universities with their careers all made for them, because of their ability in athletics, bringing with them a spirit of professionalism utterly foreign to university ideals. And yet all this has come as a natural result of the heritage of the American college student, of enterprise, resourcefulness, and love of outdoor life and sports.
The ideal, of course, is a general participation of all students in some form of outdoor games, and toward this those who have the best interest of inter-collegiate athletics at heart are working. A Department of Intramural Athletics has been established for some time, which seeks to develop a general interest in all kinds of sport;—tennis, for which Ferry Field is admirably equipped with eighteen courts, boxing, gymnastics, swimming, cross-country running, hockey, indoor baseball and hand-ball, to say nothing of an increasing emphasis on class and fraternity football, base-ball, and basket-ball teams.
The difficulty which faces those who seek to develop this programme to its utmost lies in the attitude of many students and alumni, whose sole interest in the University is to see that she maintains winning teams. They fail to see that there is more in the annual "big game" than nine or eleven supreme athletes brought together to "represent" the University. Fortunately there are many more who view the whole question in its proper perspective, men who are no less thrilled by the contagious enthusiasm of the annual big games, and who recognize them as an inevitable and not undesirable factor in our college life, but who seek to bring athletics into a sane and wholesome relationship with the academic life of our universities. That is the principal consideration which underlies all the discussions which have arisen in the past and which are inevitable in the future,—as long as American youth, on the one hand, maintains its vigorous and enterprising spirit, and our universities, on the other hand, insist on their prerogative as institutions where fundamentally the things of the spirit must rule.