TRACK ATHLETICS IN THE COLLEGES The colleges, meanwhile, somewhat conserva tive as they had been at first in taking up the new sport, had long been pursuing it with under graduate enthusiasm, and the records, poor enough at first, had begun to approach within striking dis tance of the figures of what one might call modern times. Running was taken up in the Eastern col leges in the early seventies, and the Intercollegi ate Athletic Association was organized in 1876 ; but it was not until well along in the eighties and nineties that anything like the present widespread interest was aroused. It is difficult to realize, in these days of athleticism, how primitive, athleti cally speaking, the time was. It must be re membered that when running was taken up by the undergraduates the people at large had not yet "discovered the country "; the bicycle, which effected a sort of social revolution to the genera tion which used it, was not yet invented ; and the value of exercise and outdoor sport, together with all our modern erudition in the way of anthropo metric charts and pulley-weight pedagogy, were alike unknown. President Eliot, in speaking of the average college freshman of those days, describes him as a person of " undeveloped muscle, a bad carriage, and an impaired diges tion, without skill in out-of-door games, and un able to ride, row, swim, or shoot." Some of the descriptions of the Hemenway gymnasium—an antique and inadequate enough building in the opinion of the contemporary undergraduate written when that building was new, give one some idea of the naivete of those days. " Look upward ! " says one of these enthusiasts, referring to the main floor of the room in which the Har vard undergraduates are wont to huddle, juggling dumb-bells and toying with chest weights ; " what a vast network of iron frames and crossing bars and rods, all seeming at first to be hopelessly entangled with each other until they form almost a ceiling by themselves ! Here hang stout cotton ropes and there hemp ones, . . . sloping ladders, some down here by you, some away up there in the roof ! . . . Huge mats a foot thick lie spread on the polished floor beneath, ready for you to fall ; . . . that broad board sloping sharply upward is a springboard made purposely for high or long distance jumping when first you take a sharp run, then spring from the board with all your might and main ; . . . over there is a glorious stationary springboard ten feet long ; . . . pull these weights past your sides and you have the prince of chest expanders," etc., etc. 0 prince of chest ex panders ! 0 vast roof and rope tangles ! 0 glorious great stationary springboard, ten feet long ! Times have changed, indeed, and in these matters we are become sadly sophisticated.
Even the undergraduates of those days must have been different if we are to accept the words of a writer in the Outing of some twenty years or so ago. Speaking of the slowly growing interest in athletics and of Dr. Sargent, whom the con
temporary Harvard undergraduate, if we mistake not, irreverently dubs Dr. Sourgent and takes none too seriously, he says, " His tolerant and well balanced mind and personal popularity well fit him for working among college men, who often require a little coaxing and stimulus to draw them from their studies." The same observer mentions a hare-and-hound run which was tried at Cam bridge in 1882 as " that Rugby sport," quaintly notes that Walter Soren " leaped nine feet six inches with the pole," and on viewing the young men at work on Jarvis Field in their parti colored athletic clothes he is gravely reminded of the " picturesque crimson doctors' gowns of Oxford, England." The beginning was made toward a new order of things when the first races were held at Sara toga, in July, 1874, as a sort of side exhibit to the regatta of that year. Something of an idea of the desultory character of the running of that day may be gathered from the fact that the contestants in those Saratoga races were quite as likely as not to have rowed in the varsity boat the day before. Of course, for a runner to subject his legs to the heavy leg drive of sliding-seat rowing is about as fatal to speed as it would be to attach to them a ball and chain. The crude races at Saratoga in the summer of 1874 aroused a great deal of inter est, however, and in commenting on them the Harvard Advocate expressed a sentiment that was shared in other colleges when it said editori ally : " A new door has been opened for men who really mean to be what they ought physically, and it is pleasant to see already signs of a brisk rivalry in this direction. The legs — long neglected members —are now to be put to their best, and at last we have the various foot contests so well known in the British universities." There were five events at the first meet in 1874 — the mile, the one-hundred-yard dash, the three-mile run, the one-hundred-twenty-yard hurdles, and the seven-mile walk. This latter preposterous and distressing contest was much thought of in those days, and the audiences of the late seventies and early eighties took a more vigorous interest in such events than, curiously enough, they did in the sprints and hurdles. The results of this first meet were as follows: One-mile run, won by Copeland of Cornell; time, 4 minutes 58 sec onds ; second, Van Derometer of Princeton ; third, Reed of Columbia. Copeland was 14 sec onds ahead of his nearest rival. One-hundred yard dash, won by Nevin of Yale ; time, 1(32 seconds ; second, Potter of Cornell. Three-mile run, won by Downs of Princeton ; second, Goodwin of Columbia. One-hundred-twenty yard hurdles, won by Maxwell of Yale ; time, 2(31.- seconds ; second, Marquand of Princeton ; third, Rives of Harvard. Seven-mile walk, won by Eustis of Wesleyan ; time, 7 r minutes ; second, Hubbell of Williams; third, Price of Columbia.