Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Cross-Country Runnz'ng in America 351 In spite of the great interest which distance runners themselves took in the sport the general public had never, for obvious reasons, supported it with any enthusiasm, and as the prestige of club athletics declined the condition of cross-country running became rather precarious. The growing strength of the Young Men's Christian Associa– tion organizations presently helped it along, how– ever and then the colleges began to develop the sport just as they had stepped in and carried on track and field athletics when the clubs began to expire. Harvard was the first of them to take up paper chasing with any enthusiasm, and as early as 188 r what was then looked upon with curiosity as "that Rugby sport" was introduced at Cam– bridge. Pennsylvania, Cornell, the College of the City of New York, and finally Yale and Brown began to hold hare-and-ho1-:1nd runs, generally as a preliminary training for the track men. In r 890 Pennsylvania won from Cornell in the first inter– college cross-country race, and in the same year the College of the City of New York held its first championship over the Fort George course. Finally, in 1899, at Cornell's suggestion, repre– sentatives from that university and from Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, and Columbia met and organized the Intercollegiate Cross-Country As– sociation of Amateur Athletics of America- a name, as Mr. Baynes-from whose valuable re-