In 1893 the Universities of Michigan, Minne sota, and Wisconsin and Northwestern University, which had formed a league for football the pre ceding year, held an intercollegiate track meet at Chicago. There had been more interest taken in track athletics at the University of Illinois and in the Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio colleges than at either Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Northwestern, but because of the size and subsequent athletic importance of the universities which sent teams to Chicago in 1893, their meet may be said to mark the beginning of Middle Western intercol legiate athletics. Michigan won the games. The league was dissolved the following winter, but the next season, in June, 1894, a sort of invitation meet was held at Chicago, which was a much greater success than the first one. The Uni versities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois, Chicago and Northwestern Univer sities, and Oberlin and Iowa Colleges all took part. Illinois won handily, and the Iowa colleges came next. The meeting held at Chicago following the games resulted in the formation of the West ern Intercollegiate Association, which included the colleges that had sent teams to the meet and several small institutions.
This vigorous growth of track athletics was not, however, paralleled by healthy development of the amateur spirit. The decadence of the athletic clubs had already set in, and whatever influence they exerted on college athletics was bad. Unscrupulous trainers and managers vio lated continually the laws of sportsmanship, and all of these harmful influences were exerted on a public which had, as yet, no intelligent under standing of the special code of ethics which applies to sport. After Michigan's victory at the games of 1893 it was learned that the enterprising mana ger of that team had used five " ringers" to make sure of success. Such flagrant offences are com paratively easy to deal with, and the man was expelled by the Michigan faculty just on the eve of getting his diploma; but it was a harder task, as it has always been, to prevent the offering to promising athletes of sugar-coated inducements, or to pound into the heads of untutored, husky, easy-going youths a serious appreciation of the meaning of the word "amateur." Where the status of individuals was in question, there was bound to be continual bickering and backbiting between the rival colleges that made up the new Western association. At the meet in 1895, for example, Wisconsin protested at the last moment two of the best men on the Michigan team. One of these men had been one of the " ringers " on the team of 1893. But his case had been put before the association the preceding winter, it was shown that he had acted unwittingly, and he had been reinstated ; the other, a former Princeton man, had accepted a few dollars for expenses for coaching a team in Alabama, an infraction of amateur ethics which was also made without any intelligent understanding of the nature of the offence. Michigan was willing that this latter man should be disqualified, but she was dis pleased at the method which Wisconsin had taken to bring about such a result, it was asserted that Wisconsin had " doctored " up the board of directors of the league against Michi gan, and fixed things for the expulsion of two of the Michigan men regardless of all prescribed rules of procedure, and as a result she retired from the association, and arranged the following spring for dual meets with the University of Chicago. We have no desire to enlarge upon
such unseemly squabbles as this, but it is neces sary to mention at least one to make plain the situation in Middle Western athletics at that time, a situation which resulted eventually in the dis solution of the association and the formation of the Intercollegiate Conference Athletic Associa tion. This was organized by faculty representa tives of eight of the leading Middle Western colleges. Other colleges were excluded in order to bring the entry list within reasonable bounds, and to make more certain the enforcement of eligibility rules, and track athletics were at last set upon what seemed to be a permanently healthy basis.
During the years in which Middle Western track athletics were enduring these growing pains, a number of star performers appeared from time to time, who carried their successes to the East and even across the water. From Iowa, where there had been a great deal of interest and activity in track athletics, came, in 1895, John Crum to win the hundred at Mott Haven in ten flat. Crum was credited on several occasions with better than even time. In 1897 Rush of Grinnell was credited with 9t- seconds in the hundred at the Iowa intercollegiates, and with 21f in the two-twenty. Maybury of Wisconsin, the next sensational Western sprinter, won the amateur championship two-twenty in 1898, and he was credited repeatedly with having beaten even time in the West. Maybury, however, not only ran for money at Minnesota picnics, when he was too young to know better, but he competed, unfortu nately, as a professional after he had made his best record in the West and when he knew just what he was doing. Maybury's professionalism, together with that of Cochem, another Wisconsin athlete, was unflinchingly exposed by the authori ties at Madison a course of procedure which was one of the most effective things that was done toward checking undergraduate professionalism in the Middle West. Kranzlein was another phe nomenon who came up out of the West during the latter nineties to be acquired, as soon as his prowess had been demonstrated at Chicago, by the University of Pennsylvania. Of late years the track athletes of the Middle West have more than come into their own. At the conference meet in 1903, Blair of Chicago won the hundred in 95 seconds, and Hahn of Michigan captured the two-twenty in 2 seconds. In the spring of i9o4 the Michigan team fairly swept the field at the Philadelphia relay games Hahn beating Schick of Harvard, the fastest man in the East, the relay racers beating the fastest Eastern dis tance men, Schule of Michigan taking the high hurdles, while the shot-put was disposed of by Rose of Michigan with his world's record. And since the formation of the Conference Association the amateur status of Middle Western college track athletes has been as carefully preserved as that of runners in the older colleges of the East.