MINOR SPORTS MISMANAGEMENT

The announcement last Friday to the Freshman polo team that it would play Yale within a week, before a single day had been devoted to outdoor practice, is the capstone of a long era of mismanagement and lack of cooperation between the Athletic Association and the polo management.

The latter vociferously complain because their only practice field is at Myopia, twenty-five miles away, and that the inadequate ground which they had during the fall has been divided to make room for still another lacrosse field. When the University and Freshman teams journey to West Point and New Haven respectively next Saturday, each player will be paying all his traveling and living expenses.

Despite the fact that an unannounced benefactor has offered three horses for polo purposes, the management has been unable to accept the gift because of the lack of necessary funds to feed and groom the animals. The result is that, with the meager $1200 subsidy of polo, the team can never use its own horses in games away from home. This fact is made even more annoying because there are no contests scheduled in Cambridge this spring since there is no playing field.

The charge of Mr. Bingham that "polo is the most miserably managed sport in the University" has, however, been literally substantiated during the past few months. One University manager resigned, leaving the schedule in a chaotic state, and the Harvard Polo Association, a graduate body of Boston businessmen, has more than once interfered with the policy of the H. A. A. by arbitrarily shifting the dates of contests.

Nevertheless, a more liberal endowment and the grant of a playing field would ensure proper facilities for pursuing the "athletics for all" policy, and would give the undergraduate body an opportunity to see the malletmen in action.