News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
(We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest.)
Is it worth while to train a man to fight cases in courts of law? Is it worth while to train a man to perform major operations in surgery? Is it worth while to train a man to wield an oar in a boat race at New London? Is it worth while to train a man to carry a football across an opponent's goal-line?
Harvard's answers to such questions have never been uncertain. But in other parallel cases her clarity of vision seems sometimes to be dimmed. The writer has watched with pain the attempts of the athletic authorities to send one or two teams forth into competition with other colleges without the skilled training which everywhere else is regarded as indispensable. Whether the argument is that the personnel is so good that the men can afford to depend wholly upon their innate fitness and subjective inspirations, or on the other hand that it is so bad as to make it extravagant to waste a trainer upon them, does not appear. But either argument is fallacious.
Is it reasonable to suppose that, if the Harvard cross-country team had met Yale with an equality of skilled professional coaching, the first six finishers in that race would have been all Yale men? Is it not humiliating that in the meet with Technology, which most of our men entered under the handicap of physical disability, the paid coach of their opponents, after seeing his team to an over-whelming victory, gave, out of the kindness of his heart, counsel as to the well-being of the Harvard team, which he evidently pitied as being sheep without a shepherd.
No professional coach has been provided for this team and its disasters, humiliating as they have been, are but what might have been expected. Every college with which it has competed, on the other hand, has had the benefit of expert professional coaching. A few members of our team have perhaps had the benefit of a little such coaching when they were in preparatory schools, for even the latter are very generally provided with adequate coaches. Their companions in these schools who have passed into the teams of other colleges, even the smallest ones, have had this training continued until they have developed into strong runners. But those who have come to Harvard have met there a "laissez aller" policy that has put them at the mercy of their competitors.
A six-mile cross-country run is no slight task and the supervision of a competent trainer is necessary not only to help the team to win, but also to protect the men from the physical risk of zeal untempered by knowledge. Rumor says that other teams than the cross-country have also been left uncared for, but to none of them are the dangers of bodily harm arising from such neglect more imminent.
I realize of course the earnest attempt that the captains of our teams have made to supply from their own knowledge and exertions the places filled by professional trainers in more favored colleges. Probably their service has been as wise and their supervision as careful as amateurs could possibly have given. It is also true that the overshadowing importance of football in the public interest would be likely to divert the bulk of the coaching away to that sport. It is hard, we know, to find money to foster these minor sports which bring in no gate receipts, and Harvard of course is very, very poor. But the fact remains that other and smaller colleges can and do provide professional coaches for their cross-country runners which for the present Harvard seems to lack, and that while this difference exists Harvard will continue to be at a disadvantage.
The giving up of this sport would be a disaster, and if it is to be continued. It should be under such conditions as will bring honor to Harvard and health to the men who represent her. A. GRADUATE
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.