Charles Conaghan, while going through items belonging to Aunt Babe Schnorr who lived to be 100 years young, came across a 1921 Boomer, the UPS yearbook as it was called, before becoming Northern Oklahoma College Mavericks.On page 98 of the publication, an essay about school athletics appeared. It is just as appropo today as it was then.The essay follows: Abraham Lincoln said: “The ground must touch a man before he can amount to anything.”School athletics is the richest garden in which to cultivate the proper seasoning to withstand “the University of hard knocks.”Athletic sports are what remain of the instinctive movements of self-preservation by fighting or flight that have been part of our nature since pre-historic times. The cave man survived through his superior ability to run fast, leap far and to throw straight. Present civilization must not lose sight of the value of the quick eye, the steady nerve, and the firm hand. Athletics are the best possible training for these qualities. Some persons are by nature clever, physically, but exercise and training will give cleverness to the awkward man and make the clever one more skillful.It is on the athletic field where youths learn their ideals of fair play and sportsmanlike conduct that will be carried later into business, professional and political life. The player learns to recognize the worth of a fallen opponent, which is one of the best teachings of fair competition. It is no small gain to acquire the characteristics, fairness and unselfishness.There are three words which the athlete must realize the meaning of and they are: Work, energy (to do more work) and selfconfidence. Work and genius go hand in hand: genius cannot survive without work. The daily practices on the athletic field furnish experiences which give a man courage; and timidity has no place in either the struggles of business or the professional world.School athletics, like everything else, has not reached perfection, and although some schools and some athletes do not play the game fair and square, our own state, yet young, is making it cleaner every year. The average American boy plays fair and would rather lose a game than win by foul means, which is the proper training to attain the ideal expressed by Kipling in these lines:“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat these two imposters just the same: Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in ...
