BREAKING TRAINING

The age-old question of breaking training has again been dragged out into the limelight as the result of a meeting of the track team yesterday where the coach informed his men that he had definite proof in the shape of anonymous letters that some of them were breaking training. He proceeded to ask all of them to report any future defalcations along this line on the part of their teammates, and concluded with a sweeping exhortation to fight for cleaner sports and dear old Harvard. Thus was brought of a climax a subject on which certain episodes in the football season had already focused attention.

With the modern attitude toward sports, or at least the Harvard one, coaches should realize that athletes simply cannot be approached on the subject of training in the way attempted yesterday. The demanded indiscriminate investigations by undergraduate athletes for the purpose of reporting teammates guilty of breaking training would be patently foolish and absurd. Such a course cannot be deprecated too strongly; it would severely injure the growth of a sane attitude toward sports.

The common rules of training seem to imply chiefly abstinence from smoking, drinking, and dancing, with the ultimate purpose of improving a man's physical condition and his chances of winning. The correct attitude on such a question can never be formed by the coaches; it must originate from within the student body and from the athletes themselves. At present Harvard undergraduates are little disturbed by the action of any team-member in breaking training. Likewise the members of the tams are not particularly upset by the failure of a team-mate to meet the generally accepted provisions for keeping in the best of shape for victory.

In the essence, training is simply intended to give a team a better chance of winning. It is confined chiefly to major sports, and a member of a major sport team would appear to be under a tacit agreement to cooperate towards victory by keeping training. Yet men are not always out to win; they are often out merely to enjoy a sport. Some men will get more out of a sport by keeping strict training, others not. It is obvious that athletes who break training are lessening the chances of their team for victory, and it is equally apparent that they are at the same time lessening their own chances of staying on the team, as well as running the risk of lowering themselves in the general estimation of their teammates. In short, recalcitrants in this line are generally those out more for the fun and excitement of the sport and less for victory, approximating the position of men out for House teams.

While a general practice of breaking training would not be salutary, still, individual and minor cases must not be taken forcibly in hand. Training is a matter of personal enforcement resulting from a pride in individual ability and team spirit. It can never be enforced by any snooping process, and any coach who employs such a practice is tacitly admitting his own failure to build up morale.