Cambridge Student Finds System of Amateur Coaching Falls Far Short of Full Perfection

The following article was written by Allan R. Sweezy '29, former president of the Crimson and present holder of the Lionel de Dorsey Harvard Studentship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

I believe that there has been an increased interest this year in the subject of amateur coaching in American collegiate circles generally, but whether I am correct in this impression or not the matter is certainly one which in the course of the next few years is going to demand considerable attention on the part of Harvard men. It would be well, in view of this fact, to acquire as much information as possible about the practical workings, the advantages, and the drawbacks of the system of amateur coaching as employed in the English universities. The purpose of this article is merely to contribute certain first impressions toward the eventual body of such information.

English System Not Uniform

It is of initial importance that we should obtain a clear idea of what the method of amateur coaching employed here at Cambridge involves in actual practice. In the first place the coaching system is by no means uniform throughout the various sports; nor in fact is it even entirely amateur, the varsity cricket teams being under the tutelage of professionals. In the second place it is essential to distinguish sharply between the university and the college teams. There is little more connection between them here than there is between university and class teams at Harvard, and the coaching to which they are respectfully subjected is as different in the one case as in the other.

Graduates Help

So far as I know the varsity cricket teams are the only ones in Cambridge that have out-and-out professional coaching (though it must be remembered that in cricket as in other sports the captain performs many of the functions of the American coach). But there are several features of the coaching of both varsity crew and varsity rugby teams, to take the most prominent examples, which would generally, I think, be more closely associated in our minds with a professional than with an amateur regime. The purely amateur, or to be more accurate, self-coaching stage of such sports as varsity rowing and rugby comes early in the season. Throughout the first term in rowing and until the middle of November in rugby the undergraduate officers of the respective groups take charge of the entire work of training their men. And even after the end of their term as instructors the various captains retain an important voice in the selection of the teams. The coaching, however, during the period of intensive preparation for the Oxford contests is done by several old Blues (the equivalent of Harvard "H" men), who come up to Cambridge for a month or two each year for this purpose. It is true that they offer their time free so that they are technically of amateur standing, but I have been told by several people that they are chiefly gentlemen of leisure who can easily afford to devote their time to university athletics without receiving any remuneration.

Not Suited for Harvard

On the whole I believe that Harvard would find little of profit to be gleaned from the Cambridge system of handling varsity athletics. It would undeniably be of advantage to the Harvard Athletic Association if it could persuade coaches to serve without pay, but otherwise there would be no point in taking any of the leaves but of the English coaching book. If, for instance, we at Harvard are to have any outside assistance for our teams at all--and English practice affords the advocate of purely undergraduate coaching small encouragement--we may as well have it for the whole as for part of the season. And as to giving the captain a larger or even, as in some sports here, the sole voice in picking the team, English students themselves generally admit that the evils of the custom definitely outweigh the advantages.

Within the English colleges as distinct from the universities, the coaching is done largely by undergraduates. There are certain exceptions: in rowing, for instance, a former Blue often guides the first boat through the final stages of its preparation for the inter-college races, and the dons occasionally lend a hand in coaching this or that athletic group. But in the selection and management of all college teams the captain's authority is final, and the bulk of the coaching is done by the more experienced men under the direction of the captain. I have heard participants in several sports complain of haphazard organization and scanty training. One college tennis captain told me, for instance, that there is practically no coaching at all in tennis and that the selection of the team is often strongly influenced by favoritism on the part of the captain. I have also heard from cricket and soccer men that both organization and training are slack as far as the college branches of their sports are concerned. The interesting fact, though, is not that they admitted the organization of these sports to be loose, but that they complained of its being too loose. For I think that it may safely be said that as a rule the English student places relatively little store by efficient management and well developed organization in his sports. In rugby, for example, matches of one kind or another start almost with the season, and from then on the participants are far more concerned with playing the game than with learning how to play it.

Rowing differs markedly from most other sports here in that the time given to practice and training of necessity far outweighs that occupied in actual competition. It is consequently in rowing that the most highly developed system of coaching exists. The best oars in the college boat club divide up the various crews among them and each carries, insofar as is possible, the same boat through the particular training period in question. On the whole the system works very well. The veteran oarsmen usually know the fundamentals of rowing, as traditionally taught in their college, pretty thoroughly and attain a large measure of success in imparting them to their charges. I should even venture to say that a fourth college crew here fares rather better under the full time guidance of a veteran third year oarsman than a fourth hundred and fifty pound crew does at Harvard under the occasional supervision of a much overburdened professional coach.

As soon as several of the new House units have attained actual, in place of prospective existence, Harvard is going to be faced with an enlargement and reorganization of intra-mural sports. Incidentally the House system ought to revitalize intra-mural athletics in furnishing them with the vigorous competitive element they so badly need at present. But however this may be, the problem of coaching the House athletic groups is going to be of great importance. And it seems to me that Harvard can profit materially by the experience of her parent university, both as to what might be imitated and what avoided. On the one hand, if the Houses develop fourth, fifth, and even more teams in various sports, as is to be hoped, a great deal of coaching can certainly be done by Seniors and Juniors. On the other, however, I more than doubt the wisdom of placing complete control of House athletics in the hands of the several captains. Inevitable disagreements with the captain's general policy and wide spread disapproval of patently faulty judgment in his picking and handling of men are frequently encountered here at Cambridge, and are generally of a more disagreeable sort than similar dissatisfaction with a graduate or professional coach. Harvard is fortunate in having constantly at hand a large number of fine athletes in her graduate schools. If each House were to employ a graduate student as general coach and supervisor of each of its sports, better organization, better training, and greater fairness would, as a usual thing, be secured than if the sports were left entirely under the direction of the undergraduates themselves