Track team

“ The candidates for the track team are crazy to get out of doors and begin regular practice on the Soldiers' Field cinder track, but it 's too soft yet to be raked and rolled, and they have to keep working in the gym and on the tiresome old board track behind it. Dick Smith was talking about this not long ago when he joined me in the Yard. He says it's great on a warm spring morning to go across the river and sit on the bleachers and watch the fellows practise starting and short sprints. ”

“ Pennimore was abroad and Sound View was still closed. Gerald roomed with Dan in 28 Clarke.
But life wasn’t all discouragement for Gerald to-day, for this morning the long-delayed summons to the track and field candidates had appeared on the notice board in the corridor of Oxford.
“There will be a meeting of all candidates for the Track Team in the Gymnasium at four-fifteen this afternoon. New men are wanted in all events, and any one who has ever done any distance running or would like to try it is especially urged to come out. ”

“ This year, as usual, with the appearance of the call for track team candidates a veritable epidemic of athletic enthusiasm swept over the Academy. The crew candidates, who for weeks past had been quietly exercising with chest weights and dumb-bells and running around the track without occasioning any particular notice, now went to work on the rowing machines and were daily viewed by a throng of their fellows. ”

“ The second week in March witnessed the return of the track team candidates to practise in the gymnasium. Spring was unusually late that year—perhaps you recollect the fact?—and several feet of snow hid the ground until well toward the last of March. But meanwhile the candidates, thirty-eight in number, were divided into two squads and were daily put through chest-weight and dumb-bell exercises and sent careening around the running track. ”

“ The Oakland High-School athletes have every reason to feel proud of the record they have made on track and field this year. The track team won both the autumn and the spring field days of the Academic Athletic League, and took eight points in the recent Pacific Coast Championships. They have showed themselves to be so strong an aggregation that they can only secure meetings with university teams. ”

“ It was a noisy crowd of students that assembled at the Winthrop athletic field on that day early in May when the trials for the track team were to be held. Keen as was the interest in baseball the interest in the track team was even keener, for hope was high among the students that a championship team would be turned out and the competition among the eight colleges that composed the league was at fever heat. ”

“ The school race will be a relay race—each man of the four entered by each school to run a quarter of a mile. The college race, however, is to be a team race, all the contestants to start together, and every man to run a mile.
The track will be of clay and loam, six inches deep and twenty feet wide, rolled hard. Consequently spike shoes will be allowed, and, as a result, there ought to be considerable record-smashing. Spike shoes will also be allowed in the jumps.
Most of the New York schools will send strong teams to the Garden. ”

“ Even if we found fellows now to come out and work for track positions there is scarcely time to develop them. And, for my part, I doubt that we can get any. Guy made a pretty good canvass of the school last month and I think he’s got hold of about all the talent there is. Seems to me, then, that the only thing to do is for us fellows to see if we can’t come to the rescue and round out the team better. I’ve never run a half-mile in competition and don’t know what I could do, but I’m willing to try. ”

“ But very few Columbia fellows were anxious at this early stage in the race. They knew only too well that ten miles was a long distance to cover, and all sorts of things could happen before the goal was in sight.
“Frank and Lanky and Bones make a team that is simply unbeatable!” they continued to say, one to another, as the last of the nine runners vanished from view up the road in the distance.
“Yes,” others would add, “don’t we know the tactics of Frank Allen to a dot? You never would catch him letting himself out in the start of a grilling ten-mile run, like that new fellow does. ”

“ At any track-athletic meeting where teams of athletes represent certain units, the team winning the greatest number of points becomes the victorious unit, and the athletes who aided in piling up these points, as representatives of that unit, are of no importance whatever so far as they can claim any relation to the other athletes who strove as representatives for the rival or defeated units. ”

“ TRACK-ATHLETIC TEAM.
The superior value of team-work over individual brilliancy was effectively demonstrated at the New York State Interscholastic games at Tonawanda, New York, June 6. The honors of the occasion were carried off by the Buffalo High-School team with 38 points, Syracuse H.-S. coming second with 36, and Ithaca H.-S third with 27.
Ithaca boasted the most brilliant performer of the day—A. B. Miller—who took four firsts, thereby earning twenty out of the twenty-seven points to Ithaca's credit. Miller is a sprinter, and a sprinter of the first class. ”

“ While we revolve such questions, our carriage rolls on; the coachman cracks his whip, evidently proud of his skill in turning sharp corners without reining in; the runners jump with amazing agility off and on the foot-board and crack their whips, rush to the [209] front to encourage the leaders of the team up steep inclines, fall again to the rear when it goes down hill in full gallop. The exhilarating motion makes the blood tingle in the veins. ”

“ If you are to drive over good level roads, your wheelers may be placed as near the coach as will enable them to go at a good gait without hitting the splinter-bar or wheels. The length of wheel-traces should be about ninety-seven inches, of the lead-traces about ninety inches. With smaller horses the traces are, of course, proportionately shorter. A long drawn out team is hard on the arm and hand, not so easily manœuvred, and, being farther from their work and from you, not so likely to be easily handled. ”

“ These races also afford an opportunity for smaller schools, that have not any particularly able athletes, to send representatives in the form of a relay team, and such a team from a small school, if well trained, stands as good a chance of success as the runners from any larger institution, because success depends upon team-work. If relay races become fixed events on the in-door card, it is probable that the country schools—such as Lawrenceville, the Hill, and others—will eventually regularly enter a team at one or more of the winter meetings here. ”

“ This first class in athletics for women was in charge of Mr. James Lathrop, for many years athletic trainer at Harvard and instructor in the Theory and Practice of Athletics at the Summer School. He ordered for Miss Eva G. May, then an instructor in the gymnasium at Vassar, the first pair of spiked running shoes ever made for a woman. The Vassar College Athletic Association provided these running shoes for every student who entered field day.”
One of the main difficulties in track work at the present time is that there is no set standard for coaches and participants to use. ”

“ As the gig came out close at the wheels of the wagon, the two whips interchanged glances, as much as to say, "Here's at you!" and "Come on!" and Losing tightened his reins; then, as his leader ranged up alongside Benson's horses, the latter drew up his lines also, and the teams went off together.
A good team race is more exciting to both the lookers-on and the performers than any contest of single horses; there is twice as much noise, twice as much skill in driving, and apparently greater speed, though in reality less. ”

“ On meeting a team the rider must stop and stand at side of road between the bicycle and the team—the outer side of the road if on a grade or curve. In passing a team from the rear, the rider should learn from the driver if his horses are liable to frighten, in which case the driver should halt, and the rider dismount and walk past, keeping between the bicycle and the team.... ”

“ As to there being any danger in merely galloping a coach, I am sure there is not, even at a high speed, provided the wheel horses are well matched in stride, the team well put together, and kept well in hand, and when there is sufficient draught to keep the leaders' traces tight. This will be apparent from the fact that, however much a coach may have been lurching previously, as soon as the leaders commence drawing, she becomes perfectly steady. Of course with the pole chains too slack there would be danger. ”

“ Present day racing comprises track meetings, practically all over the country, every Saturday. Many of these are unimportant. The aspirants to fame should keep a look out for the N.C.U. Championships which are now allotted to various centres. The clubs in London, Manchester, Birmingham, etc., hold various track meetings for races varying from one mile to fifty miles, the longer distances being sometimes paced by tandems. ”

“ I suggest that the New York and Brooklyn associations combine, because it seems to me that it would be more profitable, on account of the larger number of entries, the greater interest, and the greater attendance such a union would command. Should the bicycle event be stricken from the interscholastic card, an excellent substitute would be a relay race. Relay races, as I have frequently said within the past few weeks, are becoming more and more popular all over the country, and sooner or later the relay race will become a standard event on every track-athletic card. ”

“ As the two reins together, the off-lead and near-wheel, are the most troublesome to the beginner, it is well to remember that if your leaders are straggling to the left and your wheelers to the right, pushing these two centre reins back a little will put things straight. For the opposite trouble, pulling them forward a little will solve the problem. The leaders of a team are there to help over heavy roads and in going up hill; but as they have no pole to support them, their position is the more tiring one, and they should be cared for accordingly and not allowed to pull all the time. ”

“ Nor are modern horse-keepers less ‘nimble fingered’ than those of whom Nimrod wrote. At the International Horse Show of 1908 Miss Brocklebank's grooms won the Hon. Adam Beck's prize for ‘Best coach and appointments and quickest change of teams’: the change was accomplished in forty-eight seconds. During James Selby's Brighton drive horses were changed at Streatham in forty-seven seconds. [Pg 55] The road coachmen of the present day do not aim at lightning changes of team: the work is done in leisurely fashion, and passengers enjoy the opportunity afforded them to get down for a few minutes. ”

“ Two of the requirements for entering the race were that the car had to be made in the school shops and that it must have a certain kind of a wheel, which in this case was one condemned by a local factory, thus making the wheels and wheel base of all cars alike. Two boys to a car constituted a racing team, and during the race they could exchange positions at their pleasure. The necessity of "nursing" their cars down the steep grades and around difficult corners developed into an important factor. ”

“ Where you have but one man at your service, he should stand at the heads of the wheelers [380] where he can hold them by their heads and the leaders by their reins. Never attempt to hold or to stop a team by running to the heads of the leaders. They cannot stop if they would, with a coach and the two wheelers pushing them from behind. Get to the heads of the wheelers and stop them, and thus, if it is not too late to do it at all, stop the whole four.
Keeping four horses up to their work, or well in hand, does not mean that they should be all, all the time, tugging at their traces. ”

“ It was a mile from the supply camp to the point up the valley where the track-layers were speeding the race, and from one of the hill-shoulder curves they could see the approach to Little Ophir, the goal to which both railroads were racing. At the next turn they came up with the track force driving the work; many men and teams, a supply train inching ahead as the cross-ties and rails were needed, the long-drawn blasts from the engine’s stack playing a deep undertone to a medley of shouts and cries and the clanging of spike-mauls. ”

“ This “points the leaders,” who accordingly make the required turn, while at the same time the right hand bears lightly on the wheelers’ rein of the opposite side, to prevent them making the turn too sharply for safety to the coach behind them. As soon as the turn is made—and all this applies equally to the passing of other vehicles or obstacles on the road—the driver’s left thumb releases the loop, which runs out of itself, and the team returns to the straight formation. ”

“ Feel your horses' mouths gently as a reminder that something is coming, give the word, let them have sufficient rein, let the wheelers into their collars first, and go off quietly at a walk. If you are driving a green team, or a mean team, or a team you are making, always start from the stable yourself. Even if your coachman is a better coachman than you are, it is best to get away with them yourself, and to keep them amenable from the start. Although it is advised here to let the wheelers start the coach, the ideal way is to let all four horses feel their traces at the same moment ”