The appointment of two recent graduates to assist in coaching the track team during the fall season, is obviously one of the means of tiding over the period before a new head coach is selected. But there is more than expediency to recommend the idea. If, as has been rumored, Teschner as well as O'Connell and Hauers is secured as an assistant coach, the track men will have the benefit this fall of expert knowledge in the three major departments-sprints, distance, and hurdling.
The plan, it is clear, closely parallels the system which has been no successful in football. Both Coach Haughton and Coach Fisher have always tried to secure for their teams expert individual advice from graduates who have themselves played the positions which they are coaching, and results seem to have justified the idea. There is no reason why the same idea should not be similarly successful in track; at least it deserves a fair trial.
Unfortunately a fair trial is just the thing, that the new idea is most unlikely to secure at present. The track situation is deplorable, to say the least, and is certainly not conducive to a successful season or to the best work on the part of coach or athletic. But if the system is continued in the spring, with a head coach and with other intentions than those of serving as a go between, it will be of real value and will give permanence to a situation that is now in flux.
But there is a broader problem involved. Events in more sports than one are forcing the conclusion that Graduate Advisory Committees are as much of a detriment as a help. There is a growing feeling that a system which allows such Committees to hold coaches absolutely at mercy and to make or break contracts practically at will, is wrong in theory and in practice. A far better field of usefulness would seem to lie in the system which has long been in vogue in football and which has just been adopted in track.
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Curtain Call