Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1917 — Country to See Greatest Athletic Activity During The Next Twelve Months [ARTICLE]

Country to See Greatest Athletic Activity During The Next Twelve Months

Dt. Joseph E. Raycrott, director of the department of physical science at Princeton, predicts a year of unusual athletic activity among the army training camps. He says: “There will be more real and widespread athletic activity in this country during the next twelve months than ever before in our lifetime.”

Doctor Raycroft is a member of the war department’s commission on training camp activities. “That the colleges have abandoned athletics is entirely a false notion that has attained too general circulation and acceptance,” says Doctor Raycroft. “The colleges have not and will not abandon athletics; what some of them did abandon was Intercollegiate competition. “Take Princeton, for example. Of our student body of some 1,600 young men, nearly 800 promptly enlisted for war service and at once began training for it. It left them neither time nor opportunity to engage in competition with other college athletes, and we therefore made a virtue of necessity.” Doctor Raycroft disagrees with the

popular notion that American expertness In baseball throwing will prove' a distinct advantage in the hurlin' of bombs. Trench experience, he stares, has demonstrated that the most effective results with those deadly little missiles is obtained by a forward and thrusting throw, as in shot-putting or the short-armed bowling throw which prevails in cricket. Information obtained from those who have had experience with bombs and grenades on the battlefields and tn the Canadian camps' Indicate that the free overhand baseball throw is too prone to overshoot the mark to be of such pronounced advantage, as most American* have fancied must prove the case. Practically every branch of sport will be encouraged In the training camps, but It Is probable that boxing will play a leading part.