In all the Eastern colleges at that time a laissez faire system of athletics existed, and the methods of training, particularly at Harvard and Yale, were curious and unlovely. Not only were pro fessional trainers employed, but each athlete chose his own — often a professional sprinter or walker who had no connection with the college. There was great rivalry among these trainers. Each one was desirous of the advertising which would come from having put a winner into the field, and the result was that the weaker candidates were neglected, while disputes and jealousies arose over the handling of the favored men, which were anything but in keeping with the spirit of a gentleman's sport. The beginning of better things came in 1882, when a faculty committee, consisting of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Professor J. W. White, and Dr. Sargent, was ap pointed at Harvard, and on their recommenda tion Mr. J. G. Lathrop was engaged as a general trainer and supervisor of track athletics. Mr. Lathrop was made " assistant in the department of physical culture " ; the track-team trainer was made amenable to the faculty, and his status as an instructor was, and has continued to be, the same as though he taught trigonometry or Greek. Further than this, the committee prohibited pro fessionals from appearing on the field, made the regulation that " no college club or athletic associa tion shall play or compete in any athletic sport with professionals," and compelled all students to pass a physical examination satisfactory to the director of the gymnasium before they were per mitted to compete in any athletic sport. These reforms of 1882 mark, in a way, the beginning of the new and modern epoch of track athletics, and with them the oldest of our universities set her seal on a sane and gentlemanly ideal of sport.
At Yale, meanwhile, as we have already sug gested, the interest in track athletics was for many years perfunctory. There had been several excellent individual athletes, such, for example, as Nevin, '76, Maxwell, '75, and Trumbell, '76, and there had been cross-country running of a desultory sort from a time as far back as 1869. In that year teams from the junior and sophomore classes ran a four-mile race through the snow in 34 minutes and 54 seconds, and in 187o there was a three-mile race with dollars for prizes ; but the new sport did not get the grip on the Yale undergraduates that it did on other New Eng land colleges. " Foot races," observes the editor of one of the Yale magazines of those days, " are, after all, very old-fashioned affairs, and are nowhere in comparison with the exhilarating game of base ball." In spite of the success of Maxwell, Trumbell, and Nevin — the latter, with typical Yale pluck and ingenuity, won the hundred in 1874 by catching the tape with his hand when he was a yard away from it—Yale sent no men to the intercollegiate during the three years im mediately following the formation of the Inter collegiate Athletic Association, and up to the year i886 Harvard continued to win the Mott Haven cup each year, with Columbia second and Yale a poor third. Among the individuals who did what was done in those years for the honor of the Blue, Brooks, '85, was of the most famous. T. DeWitt Cuyler was another of these individual stars. Mr. Cuyler was sent down to run the mile in the spring of 1880. Mr. Evart Wendell was running the sprints for Harvard, and he and Mr. Cuyler were friends. Just before the games were called, the rubber who was accustomed to prepare the Harvard sprinter for action went over to the Yale quarters, presented Mr. Wendell's compli ments, and begged to be allowed to apply his skill upon the limbs of Mr. Cuyler. The offer was graciously accepted and Mr. Cuyler's rubber forthwith sought the Harvard quarters and begged to present a similar courtesy to Mr. Wendell. It was an agreeable outcome of this exchange of amenities that Mr. Wendell won the hundred-yard dash that day and that Mr. Cuyler not only won the mile run, but broke the record and set up the figures of 4 minutes 37* seconds, which were not bettered for seven years. H. S. Brooks, Jr., ap peared in 1882. He was a big man — six feet and over in height, and he weighed nearly one hundred eighty pounds—but he won both the hundred and the two-twenty at the intercollegiate that year and the next, and in 1884 he beat the Harvard champion, Wendell Baker, by a hair's breadth in the hundred. Brooks ran against club
amateurs also, and he was one of the few men who had the honor to beat the phenomenal " Lon " Meyers. The race was a scratch two-twenty run in 1882 at the New York Athletic Club games. Of men such as these Yale had reason enough to be proud, but it was not until 1886 that the " Mott Haven Team," as a team, became of sufficient importance to make the contest for the cup between the traditional rivals really close. Harvard won in that year—the hundred-yard dash alone determin ing the result—but in the following year Yale, with Coxe, '87, the big centre-rush, as captain and weight-thrower, and such men as Sherrill, the sprinter, Ludington in the hurdles, Shear man in the jumps, and Harmer, the freshman miler, at last won. There were nineteen col leges represented at Mott Haven that year. Yale scored six firsts and four seconds. It was a well earned victory, and from that time on the track team at Yale took the place which it now holds beside the nine, the eleven, and the crew.
Similar development had been going on in the smaller New England colleges. At Amherst, where a department of physical education had been established as early as 186o and the interest in outdoor games had always been keen, the new sport was taken up with especial enthusiasm. It came in just at the time that the interest in row ing — obviously an impracticable sport at water less Amherst— was dying out, and the success of the men whom Amherst sent down to Saratoga in 1875 set the ball rolling. A regular track meet was held in the following autumn, and ever since then these class games have been a regular feature of the fall term. So has the barrel of cider which was given that year to the victorious class, and which every victorious class since then has lugged off to an innocuous bacchanal in the gymnasium. Williams, Amherst's traditional rival, was somewhat slower in getting her track athletics well under way, but there was much interest in the sport there as well as at the other small New England colleges ; and finally, on November 23, 1886, delegates from Amherst, Williams, Brown, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Trinity, and Tufts met at the Quincy House in Boston, and unanimously agreed that a New England intercollegiate athletic association should be formed. Another meeting was held later in the winter, a constitution, in the main the same as that of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, was adopted, and the first outdoor meet was held the following spring. The general feeling among the New England colleges at this time is pretty adequately expressed in the following editorial, which was printed in the Amherst Student, De cember 4, 1886: — " The need of taking this step has been felt for years, and the reason why it has been put off so long we fail to conceive. Competition with Yale, Harvard, and the larger colleges, inasmuch as no rivalry in this branch of athletics exists between ourselves and them, is unavailing. With poor chances for success at Mott Haven, the proper spirit and enthusiasm needed for creditable rep resentation could not be awakened in the col lege, and the result has been in the past that the intercollegiate contests neither promoted athletic industry in the college nor added to its reputation. To achieve success in anything, rivalry in some form must be present to actuate the participants to put forth their best endeavors in its behalf. We now belong to an association in which we have an even chance for gaining a position which will make Amherst prominent in athletic circles. Several of the colleges represented are, without doubt, equal to Amherst in athletic ability, and it will be sure to follow—that to the one which works the hardest will be awarded the honors." The colleges and schools of " up-state " New York naturally took their athletic inspiration from that haven of husky youth, Cornell. As early as 1873 Cornell had her athletic association, and at the first intercollegiates she won a first in the mile and a second in the hundred. Cope won the mile in 4 minutes 58 seconds, and Potter fin ished second to Nevin of Yale in the hundred in ic4- seconds. The first field day was held at Cor nell in 1873; and in 1878 winter indoor meets were started at Ithaca. The smaller colleges and schools in the central part of the state gradually fell into line, and in 1885 the New York State In tercollegiate Athletic Association was organized.