Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics gentleman's sport. The beginning of better things came in 1882, when a faculty committee, consisting of Professor Charles Eliot N01ion, Professor J. W. White, and Dr. Sargent, was ap– pointed at Harvard, an~ on their recommenda– tion Mr. ]. G. Lathrop was engaged as a general trainer and supervisor of track athletics. Mr. Lathrop was made " assistant in the department of physical culture"; the track-team trainer was made amenable to the faculty, and his status as an instructor was, and has continued to be, the same as though he taught trigonometry or Greek. Further than this, the committee prohibited pro– fessionals from appearing on the field, made the regulation that " no college club or athletic associa– tion shall play or compete in any athletic sport with professionals," and compelled all students to pass a physical examination satisfactory to the director of the gymnasium before they were per– mitted to compete in any athletic sport. These reforms of 1882 mark, in a way, the beginning of the new and modern epoch of track athletics, and with them the oldest of our universities set her seal on a sane and gentlemanly ideal of sport. At Yale, meanwhile, as we have already sug– gested, the interest in track athletics was for many years perfunctory. There had been several excellent individual athletes, such, for example,