Training for Athletics.

The article in Sunday's Herald by Captain Ward on the training of professional base-ball players suggests many points that would apply as well to rowing, foot-ball and any hard out-door exercise. It is the general law of training clearly put before the reader. "The sum and substance of the whole thing," writes Captain Ward, "is that a base-ball player must recognize the fact that base-ball is a business, not simply a sport." And although college athletics are not looked upon as a business, yet the idea in Captain Ward's words is true of the work of any 'Varsity team, That is, college athletics have been carried to such a point that unless continuous hard and intelligent work be kept in each branch day after day no good results are obtained. It does not seem very bad to hold off for two weeks in the fall before beginning to train for the foot-ball season. Yet any one who has, knows to his cost how far behind the others he is when he comes into training work. How short of wind he is! How tired he gets! In a week or two more he is, so he thinks, all right. But by the first of November he has a fit of the "blues" or does not sleep; and he wonders why he has got over-trained.

It does not seem very bad to keep away from the rowing machines till after the semi-annual examinations, and when an old hand takes the oars then he does not feel himself very far behind the others. But the next June he loses the race and then "can't see why Yale should have got ahead."

It is not so much the strength of the men, nor the style they row in, nor they way they jump. It is whether they have got themselves into that condition by long and regular repetition of this same stroke or jump that is going to tell in the test case. Whatever may be said to the contrary it is undoubtedly true that university teams, in the present condition of college athletics, have a regular business before them. There is no pleasure in playing a championship game of foot-ball with Yale College. And, perhaps, there is still less in rowing a race on the Thames. It is a real and earnest business, whether too much so for college sports is not the question here, and the long and tedious work is what will count for the most when the most is needed.

Captain Ward also writes that there should be more individual training. A thin man needs different work to make him come to the same mark with a stout man. A nervous fellow must be treated differently than the others. Yet the members of our crews, and base and foot-ball teams are all trained alike. When a man gets over-trained they do not let him rest a day and then go on. If one finds his lungs a little weaker than the others, and that he cannot run from a warm gymnasium into the cold, frosty air without injuring himself, he leaves the team. And yet, perhaps, that very man would row a better race in June than the others.