Sporting class

“ This neatly gotten-up book is full of valuable hints to athletes of whatever kind and character, having been compiled with rare judgment, which long years of laborious work in the sporting world has given its author. The unpretentious volume, among other things, contains useful chapters on Training for Rowing, Boxing, Wrestling, and Pedestrianism, in addition to instructions for High and Broad Jumping, Fair Walking, Hammer-throwing, and in fact everything else useful to the professional or amateur athlete. ”

“ The trouble is, I have found, that too many of you carry foot-ball and base-ball and rowing into the class-rooms with you. There’s a time for everything and a place for everything. Athletics belong on the field and when you leave the field you ought to leave athletics too. Of course I don’t expect you to dismiss foot-ball entirely from your minds as soon as you’ve had your shower; that would be expecting too much; but just see that when study time comes and when recitation time comes you put foot-ball out of your thoughts and get down to work. ”

“ While we play we keep our minds occupied by the sport, and at the same time we exercise our muscles and feed our lungs and our bodies with oxygen.
It is unfortunate that in school or college athletics those who need exercise the most are often those who are physically unfitted to play on the school teams. In other words, we select our runners and jumpers and football players from among the stronger boys, while the weaker ones really need the benefit of the sport. Every boy should take part in school games when possible even if he is not as swift or as strong as some other boys. ”

“ The years of late boyhood and early manhood say from twelve or fourteen to twenty-eight or thirty, and often until much later are those in which athletic sports prove not only most attractive, but also most beneficial to the individual and the race. In college and in most of the schools which are preparatory for college rowing, foot-ball, base-ball, running, jumping, sparring, and the like have assumed a constantly increasing prominence. ”

“ Keep the game free from the taint of professionalism, free from betting, free from the disposition that would win fairly if possible, but win at any cost, and we have a form of recreation distinctly beneficial to the whole community!
The discipline of athletics develops obedience, self-control, and the spirit of cooperation, all of them useful, moral qualities. Many a rich man’s son, ambitious for college honors, has gotten his first taste of real discipline on the athletic field. ”

“ A glorious afternoon in spring, a perfect playground, complete equipment in readiness, two score of eager youth in need of the health and recreation that come from sport pursued in the fine spirit of sport. Could anything keep them from playing? Nothing but the spirit of modern American intercollegiate athletics and the embodiment of that spirit, the paid coach, who knows that there is but one crime that he can commit—that of losing a contest. ”

“ But they need not enter into the question of the harm or benefit of athletics, since at every well-conducted school or college those boys are not allowed to take up with athletics. Yes, generally speaking, the boy who comes to school to study can afford to play football, train for football, and think football, because instead of interfering with his studies it really helps him with them. ”

“ Did you ever stop to ask yourselves what the right aim of athletics is—what the chief aim should be? Some of you will answer: ‘That’s easy; the chief aim of athletics is winning.’ Wrong; the true aim of all athletics, the world around, is physical culture. Winning is of small importance; contests are only incentives. We go in for athletics because we wish to attain to a condition of physical fitness that will allow us to make the most of our lives. Athletics without training is useless; it will accomplish almost nothing good. ”

“ Rowing, running, cross-country work, track athletics, lacrosse, handball, hockey and polo are all splendid and vigorous games, well calculated to develop the best type of physical stamina. For those possessing the requisite strength they can all be highly recommended, though as a rule it is best not to specialize in any one of them but to secure as much variety as possible. Specializing in athletics may win championships and may stimulate interest in sports, but for the average man or woman specialization is not desirable. ”

“ Rowing, cricket, football, athletics, and, in a lower degree, gymnastics, bicycling, swimming, and riding, constitute, besides walking, the favorite modes of exercise; and it is impossible to suggest better. I have only to object that, regarded as recreation, there is, both at Oxford and Cambridge, far too much tendency to a specialization of these forms of exercise. Competition dictates practice, and practice entails too exclusive a devotion to the one kind of exercise which is practiced ”

“ There is no question that it is a hard game and not suited to weaklings, but a strong, healthy boy can play football under proper conditions and with proper training quite as safely as he can do many other things to which parents raise no objections, such as wrestling, climbing trees, playing hockey, or even performing difficult feats of gymnastics or acrobatics in a gymnasium. ”

“ Then he made direct reference to athletics in its relation to both college spirit and college life.
“Sport is too much with us. Of late years I have observed a great increase in the number of athletic students, and a great decrease in scholarship. The fame of the half-back and the short-stop and the stroke-oar has grown out of proportion to their real worth. The freshman is dazzled by it. The great majority of college men cannot shine in sport, which is the best thing that could be. ”

“ For one of these factors we elders are responsible; the boy is responsible for neither.
This is the day of athletics. The adult world has learned thoroughly the lesson that there can be no perfect physical development without the training which comes from the competitive and group games. Hardly less important, of late years, has been the emphasis of those who know boys best on the social and moral aspects of athletic training. The best boys’ schools to-day provide for outdoor and indoor sports as carefully as for any other branch of education. ”

“ School and college athletics, rightly indulged in, give the budding man health, strength, courage and discipline to take with him out into the battle of life. We didn't have much in the way of athletics when I was at college, but I appreciate the modern tendency more than do some men of my age. ”

“ Gymnasium work of course will help us to build up our strength and develop our muscles, but skill in various acrobatics and gymnastic tricks does not give the clear eye and ruddy cheek of the person whose life is in the open air. Outdoor sports, like tennis, baseball, and horseback riding are far superior to chest-weights or Indian clubs as a means of obtaining normal permanent development. ”

“ We suggest that this War has shown the training of the playing-fields of the Public Schools and the 'Varsities to be quite as good as that of the class-rooms; nay, as good? Why, far better, if training for the path of Duty is the ideal end of education."
Here, as always, Paul distinguished between the amateur athlete and the professional athlete. For the latter his scorn was unmitigated, and he could not endure Association football with its paid players. ”

“ As to the matter of athletics, to which English boys are such devotees, I cannot help thinking that they are overdone, made a hobby of, and, like most hobbies in England, ridden to excess. No doubt it is a fine thing for a boy to have plenty of outdoor amusements; it is good for him to be an adept at running, leaping, climbing, swimming; but what in the world does he learn at football, the great winter game of the English schoolboy? ”

“ Each college has also a set of athletic games yearly. If we add the men who play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives, who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on the 155 ranges of the gun club, the total of men schooled in competition reaches eighty to one hundred. A simple calculation will show that when so many are exercising daily, few are left for spectators. ”

“ But the college student is prone to adore muscle. The successful athlete is, for a brief period, praised, petted, and advertised far more than is the ablest student or professor in the institution. Scarcely do the noblest achievements of science or philanthropy receive so much notice as a successful full-back on a foot-ball team. The athlete goes up indeed like a rocket, startling the ear and dazzling the eye for a moment—then oblivion, or deserved obscurity. ”

“ There is a tendency in this country to-day to give too great an importance to athletics—to take it much too seriously—and it is this tendency that should be guarded against, especially among school and college youths. ”

“ To gain this benefit in any worthy measure there must be a genuine participation in the athletic life of the institution. Some students imagine that they are greatly interested in athletics because they talk about the various events, smoke countless cigarettes on the bleachers, gossip endlessly in the fraternity house as to how the game was lost or won, taking up the time of the players with their useless prattle. All this, however, is as much like real interest in athletics as a bandbox is like a granite block. ”

“ Student athletics, although they form an important part of the necessary physical training, are not sufficient. So far as they go they are invaluable, drawing the student out of doors and away from the routine of school life, and affording exercise made vigorous by the stimulus of competition. ”

“ It is no longer regarded as deplorable for a youth to aspire to be an athlete. The whole country hangs in suspense over a college race or foot-ball game. Above all, we are in a fair way to rescue boxing from the boxers, and to restore to its proper place in the training of youth the exercise that leads all others in fitting them to be fair-minded, confident, courageous, peaceful and patriotic citizens. ”

“ The Advantages Derived from Athletic Sports.—Nothing can take the place of athletic sports to develop strong vigorous bodies in girls and young women. While formal gymnastics have both an educational and corrective value, and lay the foundation for athletic sports, they cannot take the place of outdoor sports to develop organic vigor, physical and moral courage, self-reliance, judgment, self-control, decision, and ethical training, a consideration for the rights of others, and a relaxation, particularly from mental work. Athletics are to youth what play is to children. ”

“ We find that the evidence here too, is that, in the majority of cases, the sport has been beneficial to the physical development and discipline of the school and that the consensus of opinion is that scholarship has certainly not suffered. ”

“ The place of physical training and of games in education, the place of athletics in our daily life and in our national life, are questions of present importance to us all, and in considering these questions we cannot fail to learn something from the athletic history of a nation which for a time at least succeeded in reconciling the rival claims of body and of mind, and immortalized this result in its art. ”

“ It is supreme in matters of amateur status, records and licensing of meetings, and has control over the following branches of sport: basket-ball, billiards, boxing, fencing (in connexion with the Amateur Fencers’ League of America) , gymnastics, hand-ball (fives) , running, jumping, walking, weight-putting (hammer, shot, discus, weights) , hurdle-racing, lacrosse, pole-vaulting, swimming, tugs-of-war and wrestling. ”

“ The elaborate organization of these sports is a development of the last thirty years in our schools and colleges; but I find in Emerson the true reason for the athletic cult, given a generation before it existed among us. Your boy "hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is right, and you are not fit to direct his bringing-up, if your theory leaves out his gymnastic training.... Football, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, climbing, fencing, riding are lessons in the art of power, which it is his main business to learn.... ”

“ In addition to these four major forms of college sports, tennis, lacrosse, basketball, and swimming also have a prominent place. The four major sports are usually under the control of special athletic associations, which spend large sums of money and have a great influence with the students. ”

“ Without being in any enthusiastic sense a sport fan in college I had been sufficiently interested in athletics to go in moderately for wrestling and boxing and in my senior year the college had been blessed with an under coach who knew ring fighting from the bottom up and was willing to impart his knowledge to any of the men who cared to stand up to him on the chalked canvas. ”

“ Imagine the athletes of every village training for those prizes—thousands of boy-topers turning gymnasts, ward delegates running for something besides office, and the members of a Young Men's Association seeking paradise on this side of the grave!
With the decadence of athletic sports, games of skill come generally into favor ”

“ The boys of our school supplemented their mental education by a physical one, in which they learned thoroughly the games of cricket, racquets, football, and became adepts in running, leaping, rowing, swimming, and all other manly and athletic exercises. ”