Milers' Teacher

New York University, which claims to be the world's largest,* is not a colossus in sport. But year in & out N.Y.U. has consistently produced great track athletes. Most extraordinary has been its succession of superb milers: Frank Nordeil, Leslie MacMitchell and this season's freshman sensation, Frank Dixon. The greatest miler of them all, Glenn Cunningham, did his best running when he was a Ph.D. student at N.Y.U.

Last week the Track Writers Association, which annually picks the nation's outstanding indoor track performer, decided it was high time to bestow an award for longtime "distinguished service to track & field." No one was surprised that it went to grey, weather-beaten Emil Von Elling, N.Y.U.'s veteran track coach.

At 60, Von Elling had just capped his best year. His N.Y.U. team walked away with the Indoor Intercollegiates and captured the National A.A.U. championship, the first time a college team had turned the trick. Of the year's six outstanding track men, two--Dixon and Shotput Champion Bernie Mayer--were Von Elling's boys.

Generations of N.Y.U. undergraduates have known and loved gentle, cigar-smoking Emil Von Elling. He started coaching track at N.Y.U. 30 years ago, when few New York City college boys had ever seen a spiked shoe. Now some 150 boys turn out each year for his team. He finds them fascinating as individuals, likes to tailor a different set of exercises and training schedule for each one.

Acrobat to Psychoanalyst. Born on Manhattan's lower East Side, Emil Von Elling haunted gymnasiums where vaudeville acrobats trained; he became a skilled acrobat himself. At 14 he passed his college entrance examinations with honors and set out to be a doctor. But he had to quit C.C.N.Y. for work, eventually decided to make a career of coaching.

Running, says Coach Von Elling, requires little teaching: any healthy undergraduate can pick up distance running in a week. In training his star milers Von Filing concentrates on physical conditioning and judgment of pace. In developing stars for every event, 30 years' experience has taught him that a great coach is less a teacher than a psychoanalyst.

One of Von Elling's toughest cases was a boy he once discovered jumping onto some porch steps. The coach trained him carefully, but to his dismay the boy failed to show up at his first big meet. Said the boy: "I couldn't bear to appear half naked in front of all those people!'' Von Elling started him jumping before spectators in street clothes, stripped him by easy stages, finally persuaded his prodigy to brave an audience in shorts: whereupon he set a world's record in the standing high jump.

* N.Y.U. numbers over 35,000 full and part-time students. If enrollment is measured in terms of full-time students, it ranks sixth.

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