Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1895-01-24
HOW THE BOYS TRAIN
HARD WORK OF COLLEGE ATH-
LETES.

No sooner does the college athlete of
today finish With one course of train
ing than another begins for him.
Hardly had the cheers that greeted
Yale's winning crew as they pulled
their boat over the finish to an easy
victory died away when we learn that
the Harvard football team have gone
into summer quarters to begin their
training for the campaign of next fail.
From now on all the college gossip
will be Of football except that aroused
by the unusual interest in track athle-
tics, prolonged beyond it's proper pc
Rod this year by the recent Yale-OX-
ford contests. After the final Thanks
giving game has decided the champion
ship of the gridiron field, baseball will
crop up as a matter of interest, and the
candidates for the nine will begin
work in the cage, to continue there
until such weather as will permit Of
outdoor play. Winter championship
contests from time to time will serve
to keep up interest in field and track
athletics, and while the rivers are
still icebound the college crews will
begin their preparations for the dis
tant fray. For the conscientious all
around athlete there is no such word
as vacation. Men who think it is a
heartrending hardship to be compelled
to make up a delinquent examination
in French or mathematics will cheer
fully spend the summer months in a
ceaseless round of exercise, denial, and
restraint, Or in addition to their regul-
ar term work required in the college
course will spend hours in cage, tank
or gymnasium without q murmur
And the college authorities permit and
in many cases encourage it because
they believe that in this way the young
men are learning lessons and forming
habits of the greatest value for their
future
In all training for athletics the first
requisites, according to the New York
Sun, are faithfulness and implicit
obedience to rules Not many years
ago there was a man in Princeton
who had in him the making of a splen-
did athlete. He was a big, powerful,
active fellow, and was reckoned upon
as a frst-class forward for the foot.
ball team, but it was found that he
would not train or practice regularly,
and after a short trial on the varsity
he was relegated to the scrub team,
on which he played at intervals, al
ways playing the mischief with the
opposing rushers and putting up al
most invariably a hard and brilliant
game. After seeing him play one day
an alumnus who was much interested
in football went to the varsity cap
tain and asked:
''HoW is it that you haven't got
Smith ON the team? He is better than
most of your men,
''Smith is the best forward in col
lege today" assented the captain, ''but
he won't train"
''What OF that? If he can play with
out training, why lose a good man?''
Because while he would undoubted-
ly do more than his share, the general
effect on the others of putting on the
eleven man who absolutely declines
to train or practice regularly would
be so bad as to more than overmatch
his value. Even if this were not so
the effect on football in general would
be bad. Our best tradition is that no
man who won't train can play on the
| varsity"
In the following year the man in
! question trained faithfully and became
one Of the great lanes in Princeton
football annals. This principle holds
good in all big colleges. 1t is rigidly
adhered to at Yale, and a Harvard