College sports -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Sports stories; Track and field -- Fiction
Our team has broken training, and some of them are breaking it badly.
There are the long summer months before them, with the leisure hours at
seashore or mountains, and no more work until the cool winds of autumn
begin to blow. Even those of the most regular habits are kicking over
the traces, and some of the wilder spirits, that make a trainer's hair
gray before its time, to whom the six months' restraint has been a
galling yoke, are giving themselves very loose rein. I am sorry to say
that this particular team has not a large percentage of either deacons
or clergymen, though Jim Harding afterward took holy orders, became an
honor to the cloth, and will some day be a bishop. I occasionally attend
his church; and when I see his huge form at the desk, and hear his
voice, powerful and earnest, as it echoes to the farthest corner, I
wonder if he has forgotten the night when we looked for "Paddy's cousin,
the copper," when "every one was a winner."
As I enter the hotel lobby, after dinner, on this evening of the games
of 188-, I discover Jim standing near the street entrance with Harry
Gardner, and a little knot of college friends and admirers. They are
smoking like bad chimneys, and between puffs are giving a green reporter
some most surprising bits of information, much to their own enjoyment
and the delectation of their friends. The little reporter is taking
copious notes, which will create a sensation in the morning, if the
sporting editor does not discover them before they get into print. Jim
is big and blond, and Harry slender and dark; the former has made a
first in the "hammer-throw;" the latter, after winning his trial heat in
the "hundred" with ease, got away badly in the finals, and had to
content himself with adding a single point to our score.
Now, Jim and Harry are particular friends of mine; I shall never handle
them again, and I want a last word or two of farewell. They have
developed under my care from awkward boys to the finished athletes they
are to-night. I have seen the firm, round muscles becoming more and more
perfect; the heart and lungs grow equal to more and more severe tests,
and the increasing courage and self-reliance (without which there can be
no success on the cinder-path) which will help them through many a
struggle with the world they are about to enter. It is one of the sad
parts of a trainer's life that he must lose such friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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