In the following year, 1875, a committee of Saratoga citizens arranged the games, which con sisted of ten events, and were more ambitious and successful in every way than those of the previous year. Pennsylvania made her first appearance at the intercollegiates in these games in the person of H. L. Geyelin, '77, and it was here that the red and-blue colors of Pennsylvania were first worn in an intercollegiate contest. Amherst also entered the running in 1875, and her team carried back three prizes: Barber, '77, taking first in the mile run in 4 minutes 444 seconds, and second place in the half-mile, while Morrell, '77, won the three mile run in 17 minutes 71 seconds. Of the points, Harvard, Yale, and Amherst each won two firsts, and one first went to Williams, to Union, to Wesleyan, and to Cornell. Mr. James Gordon Bennett added to the interest of these early games by donating handsome cups, and in 1875 the Saratoga citizens' committee also put up valuable cups for prizes. By this time the interest in the new sport was so lively and so general in the colleges that the formation of an intercolle giate association for the purpose of holding track contests began to be seriously considered. Mr. George Walton Green of Harvard, now dead, Mr. Creighton Webb of Yale, Mr. Clarence W. Francis of Columbia, and Mr. H. Laussat Geyelin of Pennsylvania were among those who were most actively interested in the matter, and who finally issued a call to the colleges for a meeting to organize the association. The first meeting was held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in New York City ; the association was presently formed and the first regular intercollegiate championships were held at Glen Mitchell, at Saratoga, during Regatta week in 1876. Princeton won four firsts—the half-mile run, done in the now ridicu lously slow time of 2 minutes 16i seconds, the three-mile walk, the shot put, and throwing the baseball. Williams won two firsts — the one-hun dred-yard dash, done in i r seconds, and the quar ter-mile, done in 56 seconds. The other four events were divided among four colleges: Dart mouth taking the mile in 4 minutes 582 seconds, Yale the high hurdles in seconds, Columbia the high jump with 5 feet 4 inches, and Pennsyl vania the broad jump with a leap of i8 feet A inches.
Harvard and Yale, who were each destined to capture one of the two " Mott Haven " cups that have since been awarded " to the college winning the intercollegiate games the greatest number of times in fourteen years," were quite snowed under during the first few years of the intercollegiate games by Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and the smaller colleges of New England. Har vard did not win a first place at the regular inter collegiates until 1879, and at Yale the apathy to track athletics was so effective that no one was entered after the games in 1876 until 1880. By that time, however, track athletics had begun to be pursued with such enthusiasm at Cambridge that it was not until six years later that Yale developed a team that could meet her natural rival on even terms.
The Harvard track men of those days had one advantage over their brethren in New Haven in that their field was near at hand. Jarvis Field, where the early running was done, is only a stone's throw from the dormitories in the Harvard Yard, and the men could leave their lectures at ten o'clock, for example, take their runs, bathe, dress again, and be back in their seats for an other recitation within the hour. The Yale field,
on the other hand, was on the outskirts of New Haven. It was not practicable to attempt going there until the late afternoon when lectures were over, and even that meant using up about all that was left of daylight before dinner time. As a re sult only those men who were very keen for the sport or particularly good at it went in for run ning. This difference in conditions at the two universities may have accounted, partially, for the difference in the way track athletics developed at Harvard and at Yale during the eighties. The Harvard teams were all comparatively large ; that is to say, a great number of men of average ability trained for them, and as a result all-round teams were put into the field. At Yale, on the other hand, track athletics were a desert waste punctuated by a few oases-like star performers. The more normal and pleasurable conditions at Cambridge resulted as normal and healthy condi tions in any sport always will result, — in sending into the field teams of superior merit, — and it was not until the early nineties, when Yale adopted the Harvard theory of developing a large number of moderately good men, that the track teams came up to the standard set by her nines and crews. One of the pleasantest features of the smaller colleges is the nearness and neighborliness, generally, of the athletic to the studious and social side of under graduate life. Men may sit in their window-seats and look up from their books to see the eleven practising signals at the farther end of the campus, or have their meditations enlivened by what has been called the sweetest of all sounds, — the crack of a willow bat against a baseball. This delight ful neighborliness is generally crowded out sooner or later in the larger universities ; but in the Har vard of the eighties it was at least partially pre served, and it was not only pleasant, but it resulted, doubtless, in bringing out many men who might never have tried their hands or legs at track sport, or known how good they really were. In 1891, for instance, Finlay broke the record at Mott Haven in the hammer throw. Finlay took up the hammer-throwing merely because one day, as he was crossing Holmes Field on his way to practise with the eleven on Jarvis Field, he hap pened to pick up a hammer, and hurl it some eighty feet at the first throw. Many another weight-thrower or runner happened into the sport in a similar way, and it is almost a tradition of the track that the men who make the records gener ally have never worn a spiked shoe before they came to college.
The Harvard Athletic Association was organ ized in the autumn of 1874, after the first inter collegiate races at Saratoga ; four years later the Hemenway Gymnasium, the best gymnasium in the country at that time, was built, and in 1883 a quarter-mile track was laid on Holmes Field. There was no better track in the country, and the men who used to run on it firmly believed that there was none so good, and with this track and an adequate gymnasium and field-house almost adjoining the Yard, there was every reason why track athletics should be pursued with enthusi asm. That this was the case, the teams of those days are proof enough, and it was in the eighties — in the days of Evart Wendell, Walter Soren, Goodwin, Easton, Baker, Rogers, and Wells that for seven years straight the Mott Haven championship was won by Harvard.