WINTER SPORTS GAINING IN AMERICAN COLLEGES

The average American, if asked whether he thinks more college men are engaged in athletics in an American university than in a Canadian university, would invariably give the American university for his answer. And yet he would be wrong. Statistics were collected of the number of men taking part in athletics in the universities of these two countries a year ago, and it was found that, in proportion to the size, the University of Toronto led. This is explained by the fact that in Canada every child is trained to live outdoors in winter, and so it naturally follows that when grown up he continues to take part in winter sports. He has become a proficient skater, or snowshoer, or ski-runner, and when he goes to college he enters into these sports.

It has been found that hockey receives the greatest attention. For many years there have been keen contests between the Canadian colleges in this sport, and their proficiency has been seen by those American universities which have begun in recent years to compete with them. They also have contests in snowshoeing,--long cross-country walks which try the endurance of a man more than any other sport. This is the easiest of the three winter sports to learn, but it requires more hardihood and more endurance than either of the others.

Ski-running has received much attention. Meets have been held between the colleges, in which there have been short dashes, long distance runs, and above all jumping. Many long and difficult jumps have been made, scarcely equalled by the people of Norway and Sweden.

This sport, has attracted so much attention that seven years ago, in January, 1910, a prominent ski-runner at Dartmouth founded a club there. For two years he shouldered all the burdens and took upon himself the task of getting the men to ski or snowshoe. How well he succeeded may be seen by the fact that the next year, Dartmouth held a Winter Carnival in which there were races and jumping competitions on skis and snowshoes. This competition was held only between members of Dartmouth and a few neighboring colleges. It proved so great a success, however, that in the following year, men from colleges all over the country were invited. It was made a week of festivities, and assumed the importance of Commencement week at Princeton or "Prom" week at Yale. There were dances and dramatic club performances in the evening, or basketball games, but the part that attracted the greatest number of people were the outdoor events. These consisted of dashes and long runs on skis and snow-shoes, of obstacle races on snowshoes, of ski-jumping, both exhibitory and competitive, of hockey games, and of skating races. That year, strange to say, the ski-jumping contest was won by a student from a college in Florida.

Every year, the prominence of this event among the athletics of Dartmouth has been gaining, and more and more participants have been taking part in the Carnival from an increasing number of colleges, with better and better results. Last year C. G. Paulson of New Hampshire State College, broke the record of ski-jumping.

These sports have spread to a considerable number of colleges throughout the country, but, of course, only those colleges can take them up which are fa- vored with long cold winters. This necessarily bars the colleges in the south. Among the colleges to take up these winter sports are Cornell and Wisconsin. They have not been so well organized in the former university, but the latter has made them the big feature of the winter months.

On the whole, then, it can be said that during the past ten years the American universities of the north have begun to see the advantages, the excitement, and the fun in these sports, and to realize that they make for endurance and skill, and have given them a greater and greater place among their athletics