Of the college sprinters of the pre-Owenite period Mr. Evart Wendell of Harvard is one of the best known to the present generation. Mr. Wendell was the intercollegiate champion of his day, but his interest in track athletics did not die when the time came for him to drop out of the running, and he has never ceased to devote a con siderable portion of his leisure to the enthusiastic encouragement of college sport. His leading of the cheering at Harvard-Yale games of all sorts has become a sort of classic. A Mott Haven event without this familiar figure among the timers at the tape can hardly be imagined, and it is believed by many careful observers of undergraduate phe nomena that Mr. Wendell's annual meteoric ap pearance on the winter evening when the Harvard track-team candidates get together in answer to the first call, his bringing of the glamour of the " outside world " into the quiet of the Yard, his effervescent reminiscences, and his splendid even ing clothes have done as much to put backbone and enthusiasm into bandy-legged freshmen, and convince them that not all the eclat goes to the eleven and the crew, as all the exhortations of college editors and team captains and the hopes of athletic glory.
The best college sprinter before Evart Wendell was H. H. Lee of Pennsylvania, who won the hundred three years in succession, in 1877, 1878, and 1879, and the two-twenty twice. Directly after Wendell came Brooks of Yale, '85, who as a freshman won the Mott Haven hundred and two-twenty in 1882 and captured the latter event again in 1883. Brooks weighed something like one hundred eighty pounds, yet he managed to do 50k seconds in a quarter, and defeated " Lon " Meyers from scratch at the New York Athletic Club games in 1882 and in 1884 in the two twenty. Wendell Baker of Harvard, who also ran at this time, was an unusually pretty runner. He lacked but one inch of six feet, and in running trim he weighed a trifle less than one hundred forty pounds. Although Baker never won the hundred at Mott Haven, he was good, when in his best form, for ten seconds flat, and he cap tured the two-twenty three years in succession in 1884, when he brought the intercollegiate record down to 225 seconds, and in 1885 and 1886. The quarter in 1885 went also to Baker, and in that same year F. M. Bonine of the Uni versity of Michigan won the hundred. It was the first time an athlete from a Western college had won a championship at Mott Haven. Sher rill of Yale, '89, was the next collegiate sprinter of unusual ability to appear, and one of the best runners that ever was developed at Yale. He won the hundred four years in succession, the two-twenty three years in succession, and while a sophomore he ran against all corners at the national amateur meet and won. He was good for ten flat, and it used to be Trainer Mike Murphy's opinion that if he had been pushed hard enough in 1889, when he was in perhaps his best form, he would have beaten even time. Luther Cary of Princeton appropriately closes this pre-Owenite period, although he ran and won at Mott Haven the year after the new record was made. Cary was a short man, and his style was a bit labored, but there is little doubt that he was the fastest college sprinter up to his time. In
1891 he won in the same day both dashes, putting the hundred-yard intercollegiate record at ten flat for the first time, and breaking Sherrill's two twenty record by two-fifths of a second. Cary's record in the longer dash held until 1896, when Wefers appeared and all established things went to smash. It was Cary, as we have already ob served, who ran second to Owen when he broke the ten-second record, and in that race, after a slow start, he had the honor of gaining on the champion, and finishing at least two feet nearer to him than he had started.
The breaking of the record for the hundred yards was not the only thing which marked the early nineties as the beginning of a new period in track athletics. It was in the early nineties, as we have said, that the standing start — one of the vague reminders of the old days of profession alism — gave way entirely to the more rakish and graceful crouching start. The semi-circus costumes of tights and trunks had already been displaced by the more sportsmanlike-looking running clothes of the present day, and a man who could not do at least mi when he had to was no longer to be looked upon as a sprinter of the first class. In 1896, six years after Owen had broken the ten second record, Bernard J. Wefers of Georgetown repeated the feat of the young Westerner, and the hundred was again done in one-fifth of a second better than even time. It seemed as though man's limit had, perhaps, been reached, and for six more years the breathless quest went on in vain, and then the impossible was again achieved, and Arthur Duffey of Georgetown University snapped the tape in 95 seconds. In terms of distance this tiny fraction of time meant beating a nine and four-fifths man by about six feet of daylight.
The average standard of speed in the sprints so markedly improved during the nineties that it is quite impossible in this place to describe in any detail the performances of any but the record breaking men. At the intercollegiates, before the little whirlwind appeared from Georgetown to take the hundred four years in succession, Cary, Ramsdell of Pennsylvania, Crum of Iowa, Wefers, and Tewkesbury and Kranzlen of Pennsylvania had all done lo seconds flat. Of these, in addi tion to Wefers, Crum at least was supposed by his friends to have beaten even time on other tracks. In the two-twenty, since Cary had set the record at 2I5 in 1891, W. Swayne, Jr., of Yale, Ramsdell, Crum, Wefers, Tewkesbury, Lightner of Harvard, had all done 22 seconds or better, and Wefers had lowered the record for the longer dash to 211 seconds. Close on the heels of these first-string men, and themselves first-string men in their own colleges, were and are many fast runners — runners like Richards of Yale, Jar vis of Princeton, Maybury of Wisconsin, and any number of others whose work cannot even be glanced at here, who ran during the nineties and are running every spring now on scores of cinder paths in times that thirty years ago would have been thought phenomenal.