The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-02-06
TRAINER LATHROP'S VIEWS

| Trainer James G.. Lathrop says of the
matter:
81 am opposed to debarring school-boy
athletes from competing altogether. and
| from making them attend a wear at a
college before they are eligible. 1t seems
| to me to be putting a premium on poor
school athletes. A boy in school who in
hard if success is going to spoil him in his
| freshman year at the college.
That is the way Trainer Lathrop feels,
and that is mild in comparison with what
| less prominent Harvard men have to say.
! why" says one, at is the most absurd
suggestion l have ever heard, for if we
are going to debar good school-boy ath-
and say that any man who has ever made
a commendable record in any event shall
be prevented therea fter from doing any
school-boy athletes; it is from the west
ern and southern colleges, and from small
colleges everywhere, who are turning out
good athletes and then lose them by some
method or other, while a big college gets
them. | have never heard of any induce
ments being offered to school boys, and il
they were it is not well to confound scho-
lastic with collegiate athletics, for the re-
suit will be the killing of the former.
School boys who think that they can
win glory at college, and who at
get there. will be very likely to either give
up training or to give up college,"
Harvard does not feel that there is dan
ger from the schools, but from the col
leges buying and selling their athletes.
Her own good crop of school boys would
not turn her opinion this way, for she
feels that more than athletics is neees-
sary to make a boy choose his college.
AS a matter of fact, few boys have the
deciding, anyway, for at the time the
choice is made there IS an interested
if he has any prejudice, does not get II
from the money possibilities offered by
the colleges, but from the record of that
college and the natural prejudice which
all schools have for and against certain
colleges. A boy from a Boston school
goes naturally to Harvard as Philadel-
pha boys go to Pennsylvania, Law.
renceville boys to Princeton and Connec-
ticut men to Yale. The change from GER
tain fitting schools to certain colleges is
hardly a change in most cases, particu-
larly in the case of the big schools, where
the good boy athletes attend There are
associations with some colleges as dear
as the men in the colleges themselves
and Ii would take more than the average
inducement to get boy to go to college
where his schoolmates in his class and be-
fore him have not gone.
The new rules also say that there shall
be relay race. This also Trainer La
throp does not like, although Harvard S
opposition to this will not be very rabid
Trainer Lathrop says:
~ do not believe In relay race for the
reason that it causes the good quarter
milers to do too much work. A trial heat
or 50 on the day before the games in the
regular quarter then the regular race on
the day OF the games and the relay race
means lot of hard work for the quarter
men, and for my part do not like to train
men for so much work. Still, il the other
colleges want it, and all have to do it the
same way, why, it does not make so much
difference. ] am not looking at it from
a Harvard standpoint, but from the point
of general athletics, and hence 1 object to
it,"
your daughter has rather peculiar