Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-11-15
Football, a Need of Youth
jtopp
Continued from page 8

| Lazarus. Children play until they are ex-
hausted. that Is, long after their SupertiuouS
| energy has been spent, and the worn out states
| man or financier who takes vacation and plays
| golf all day or hunts, surely has superhuous
energy to get rid of. He is recreating; that is,
trying to build up new energy Play affords
relaxation and gives the system time to restore
the exhausted powers. That is why football
is a college game par excellence Academic life
is wearing on the nerves and consumes so
much energy, that good strenuous game like
football is needed to tone up the system and
generate enough force to take them through
their studies v
Professor Gross Theory
YOU are both wrong" chimes in Herr Gross,
L the Swiss professor. Children don t play
because they need to tone up their tagged out
systems; on the contrary. they wear them
selves out playing. which shows that there
must be another reason for their playing. And
besides your theories don't explain why one
form of play is INDUCED in rather than another:
why girls, for example, play with dolls, play
housekeeping, jump rope, etc, while boys play
with hammer and saw, with air rifle and hsh-
ing tackle.
'Now 1 hold that play was established by
Nature to train and prepare young animals
and children for the serious tasks OF adult hfe
Thus, the kitten chasing after ball OF yarn
trains itself for mouse catching which its
life will later depend; and the little girl play
ing dolls and housekeeping is preparing her
self for motherhood; and the little boy with
hammer and saw, air rifle and fishing tackle,
is preparing himself to be a home builder and
food provider. Let me give other examples
Why do boys rob birds nests and orchards,
why do they fight and wrestle, play Follow
your leader etc, while girls sit on the door
step and gossip while they are making dresses
and doilies? Evidently, because these plays
will best prepare them for their hfe's duties.
"Now as to football it owes its well de-
served popularity to the fact that better than
any other sport 1t prepares young man LOT
after life by exercising and developing just
those powers and faculties that he will make
most use Of 1t teaches him patience, obedl-
ence, self denial, self control, self submergence;
it trains him in aertness and courage, IN work
ing in harmony with others; it teaches HIM
the bigness of trif1es permits him to taste the
Joys of victory and the sorrows OF defeat,Ian
of which lessons and experiences will stand him
in good stead when he reaches the estate OF
man The Young man who through play has
learned to deny himself present pleasures and
luxuries for future end; who has learned to
obey orders implicitly and cheerfully, to sub
ordinate himself to others, and to put every
bit of brain and Drawn into his ettorts,-haS
learned a lesson the books in all the libraries
in the world cannot teach him. And that Is
what foot ball does
An Echo from Our Past
VERY fine, indeed, applauds Professor Pat
rick; but still not quite true. Play is
very far removed from the serious work of
civilized man, and it is difficult to see how
football or any other sport can prepare for the
laboratory, the library. the bank, the office,
the shop the street. the factory, the farm,
and the railroad, which constitute the real
world of to-day. The games of children and
young men do not prepare for the conditions
of modern life: but they are the echoes of the
serious occupations of our ancestors in the
days primeval. What impels the boy to climb
stairs, ladders, trees, lamp posts, etc? Is it
not the instinct he has inherited from his far
distant, tree climbing ancestors? What are
the hide and seek games but faint echoes of
the running and hiding in caves of our ances-
tors, who had to conceal themselves from their