West Meets East

Intercollegiate track championships, far more than Poughkeepsie boat races or post-season football games, are a test of the legend, carefully nourished at its source, that California athletes are superior to those produced by Eastern colleges. Superficially, it does not seem to be a fair test. Only three California colleges--Stanford, Southern California, California--sent teams to the I. C. A. A. A. A.* meet at Philadelphia last week to compete against 31 Eastern colleges. Actually, the excuses of Eastern coaches--that all the best Pacific Coast athletes go to one of these three, that the climate permits all-year outdoor practice--have been made to seem a little inadequate by the fact that in the last ten years Southern California, Stanford and California have each won the I. C. A. A. A. A. team championship three times and an Eastern college-- Yale--has won only once. The meet in Philadelphia last week was hardly an East v. West engagement. From the start it was a private contest between Stanford and Southern California.

The meet lasted through two hot, dusty afternoons at Franklin Field. The first day, when a light breeze scarcely spun the wind indicator, Southern California was the favorite until Coach Robert Lyman ("Dink") Templeton surprised everyone by entering his star quarter-miler, Ben Eastman, in the half-mile heats. Eastman, said to have the most saving style of any middle-distance runner in history, won so easily that critics began to see how Stanford, with 16 men qualified for the finals to Southern California's 13, might pile up enough points to win the next afternoon.

There was not much doubt about the early events on Saturday. Kenneth Churchill won five points for California and set a new intercollegiate record by throwing the javelin 220 ft. 11 1/8 in. No one else could do 200 ft. Stanford's Jones won the discus throw without much trouble, with a Southern Californian second and Henri Laborde of Stanford third. Eddie Tolan, Michigan's little Negro sprinter who holds the official world record (9.5 sec.) for the distance, was entered in the 100-yd. dash, but Frank Wykoff of Southern California, whose unofficial record is 9.4 sec., beat him in 9.6 sec., the new intercollegiate record. Tolan won the 220, in which Wykoff was not entered presumably because the Southern California coach, Dean Cromwell, is guarding him for the Olympic Games next year.

Eastman was primed to set a new record in the quarter-mile and to try to do what no athlete has done since Pennsylvania's great Ted Meredith in 1916* win the quarter and half-mile on the same day. The next best runner in the race seemed to be Vic Williams of Southern California but Eastman had beaten him two weeks before at the same distance. They came out of the chute with Eastman running well back in the pack, his hands dangling, his stride so smooth that it might have been designed to keep his glasses from falling off. Eastman was ahead coming into the last turn when Williams, who had started badly, began to catch up, running with his legs wide apart, his face twisted into an expression of effort and fatigue. Eastman did not seem to be tired but he had not learned how to accelerate his effortless pace into the burst of speed a middle distance runner often needs for the finish. Williams was three steps in front at the tape. Third man was an obscure Southern Californian, Art Woessner, whom no one had expected to place. In the half-mile, however, Coach Templeton's strategy of entering Eastman was rewarded. He won it brilliantly, after getting into a pocket and running around his field. Eastern runners took all the point positions behind him.

No track meet, of course, is won by a single man or in a single event. First places, which count five points, are only worth one more than seconds, two more than thirds, so that the result of a meet depends not on how many races are won but on how many runners get into the final heats and stay near the winners. All the same, in a close meet, the difference between a first and a fourth place can easily decide it. Stanford was still two points ahead of Southern California last week when, in a knot of people who had come from the stands onto the bright green field, the last event, the pole-vault, was won by a 19-year-old Southern California sophomore.

The situation was precisely that one which, so gloriously pictured in sporting fiction, is enacted so badly in most real sport events. Graber, a dark, handsome, nonchalant youth, clung to a bamboo pole painted green at the bottom, slightly longer and more springy than two others which he had brought with him from the Coast. A chipper young fellow, he had brought also a small red camera with which he expected his teammate Pete Chlentzos to take his picture when he set a new record. Chlentzos stood behind him now, patting the lower part of his back, repeating for the nth time the instructions about run, takeoff and rhythmical upswing which Coach Cromwell had discovered it was Graber's tendency to forget. Then Graber began to trot forward, slowly, easily: suddenly his body swung up, over the knot of people, poised above them for a second at a wildly reclining angle in midair. Then he straightened, shot clear, dropped into a limp heap on the sawdust pile. The crossbar, placed at the height for a new intercollegiate record of 14 ft. 1/2 in., shivered but did not fall. A few minutes later, versatile Barney Berlinger of Pennsylvania (TIME, May 4), broke a tie for second place and Southern California had won the meet--46% points to Stanford's 44 22/35.

Eastern colleges had small consolation, except that Hallowell of Harvard won a great mile race, Harvard's red-headed hurdler, Eugene Record, won the 120-yd. high hurdles, and Joe McCluskey of Fordham won the two-mile run after falling down and rolling in the cinders on the first turn. Southern California and Stanford between them won eight of the 15 individual championships, and 2/3 as many points as all the rest of the colleges put together. It was an occasion on which Southern California Coach Dean Cromwell and Stanford Coach Templeton could have congratulated each other, but they did not.

Red-headed, squint-eyed, friendly, Templeton is celebrated particularly for his success with weight throwers. He once studied the leg-motions of ostriches in the hope of finding out something that would improve his sprinters. Dink Templeton writes his own newspaper copy. He prepared a story soon after last week's meet in which he called McCluskey the most courageous runner he had ever seen. He also said: "His [Graber's] five points, three and four-fifths more than Bert De-Groot took with his tie for third, provided the decisive blow which killed father."

Coach Cromwell is baldheaded, expansive, slightly fussy. His charges are proud and pleased when he kisses them for winning a race, as last week he kissed Vic Williams. In such gestures as this-- and the circumstance that young Runner Wykoff, as a reward for winning races, will ride a float in Los Angeles next week as ruler of a pre-Olympic pageant--are implied the true reason for Californian athletic supremacy--Enthusiasm.

The I. C. A. A. A. A. announced that its 56th annual meet would be held in California next year prior to the Olympics.

* Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America.

* Meredith now functions as an assistant Penn coach.

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