Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics z'n the Colleges 2 73 dress again, and be back in their seats for an– other recitation within the hour. The Yale field, on the other hand, was on the outskirts of New Haven. It was not practicable to attempt going there until the late afternoon when lectures were over, and even that meant using up about all that was left of daylight before dinner time. As a re– sult only those men who were very keen for the sport or particularly good at it went in for run– nmg. This difference in conditions at th~ two universities may have accounted, partially, for the difference in the way track athletics developed at Harvard and at Yale during the eighties. The Harvard teams were all comparatively large ; that i to say, a great number of men of average ability trained for them, and as a re ult all-round teams were put into the field. At Yale, on the other hand, track athletics were a desert waste punctuated by a few oases-like star performers. The more normal and pleasurable conditions at Cambridge re ulted as normal and healthy condi– tions in any sport always will re ult, - in sending into the field team of superior merit, - and it was not until the early nineties, when Yale adopted the Harvard theory of developing a large number of moderately good men, that the track teams came up to the standard set by her nines and crews. One of the plea antest features of the mallcr colleges is the nearness and neighborlines , generally, of the T