Jwarthmore Intercollegiate Athletics 1972 A different hall game? Swarthmore Intercollegiate Athletics'72 A//) 'f<3 "fa //9 ^ Is it winning or how you play the game that counts? “The Cultural Revolution has penetrated the last stronghold of the American myth— the locker room. Young athletes, having scaled new levels of consciousness, now challenge a long-standing article of faith— the belief that competition has intrinsic value. They enter sports in search of particular esthetic experience, essentially personal in nature. They no longer accept the authoritarian structure of sports, nor do they accept the supreme emphasis on winning.” —Bruce C. Ogilvie and Thomas A. Tutko, Psychology Today, October, 1971 No one uses the word “ revolution” to describe intercollegiate athletics at Swarthmore today. But everybody— coaches, athletes, interested faculty and administrators— agrees they are different. “Our locker room became revolutionary a long time ago,” says Professor Thomas Blackburn, familiar with Swarthmore athletics for some ten years. “What is most different 1 Swarthmore Intercollegiate Athletics ’72 today,” he says, “ is that you find few people who are 4 Today's Athletes Tell Why willing to sit out a couple of years on the second team. They Play the Game People who don’t play tend to quit.” 13 The Coaches Speak Out The change may not be sudden, radical, or complete— 17 Women's Liberation in the Locker Room adjectives Webster allies with revolution—but it is 21 Women’s Coaches Say Philosophies Differ noticeable and at times uncomfortable for all involved. 24 The College It is most evident in the team sports, where the popular 28 Class Notes do-your-own-thing philosophy clashes with the necessity for cooperation and discipline. “Swarthmore has a lot Editor: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 of super egos,” says one student athlete, “and trying to Assistant Editor: Kathryn Bassett ’35 mold them into a team is difficult.” Design Consultant: Robert Wood Change hits hardest in football, of all the team sports, Cover photograph of Mitchell Eil ’73 where playing for pleasure often seems discordant with and other athletic photographs the physical punishment involved. The size of the squad by James Purring necessary to field a team also makes football particularly vulnerable to some aspects of the new philosophy, and The Swarthmore College Bulletin, it is the least likely carry-over sport for recreation of which this publication is Volume LXX, No. 2, is published after graduation. in September, October, December, Where once Vince Lombardi spoke for the sports world January, March, May, and July with his oft-repeated remark, “Winning isn’t everything; by Swarthmore College, it’s the only thing,” now a philosophy frequently Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081. heard on the playing fields is the equally familiar maxim of the counter-culture: “ It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that counts.” As Jack Scott, OCTOBER, 1972 1 “The problems of coaching today are tremendous compared with twenty years ago. Athletes want a philosophical discussion on everything the coach says; they question everything. They don9t accept the idea that this fellow has been through this before and knows what he is talking about99 W illis Stetson, D irector of A thletics director of athletics at Oberlin sums it up: “ The that in his sport, wrestling, students work and train just counter-culture ethic takes every value of the Lombardian as hard today, and the caliber of wrestling, he judges, ethic and puts forth the exact opposite value as its is even higher now than in his day. position. Cooperation replaces competition, an emphasis Willis Stetson ’33, who has viewed the Swarthmore on the process replaces an emphasis on the product, athletic scene as a member of the Men’s Physical sport as a coeducational activity replaces sport as a stag Education Department ever since his graduation and for party, a concern for enjoyment replaces a concern for the past 23 years as director of athletics, says: “ Nothing excellence, and an opportunity for spontaneity and is as it used to be. Today’s students have so many balls self-expression replaces authoritarianism.” in the air, they are jugglers. They don’t dedicate Sports buff Edward Cratsley, acting president, themselves to any one thing as they used to, and as a generalizes that the desire to win is not as acceptable result they are hitting the high spots, one of which is as it once was. Many athletes are as concerned about athletics. They align their priorities differently than we competition in athletics as they are about evaluative used to. They will come to practice and be prompt if it comparisons in the classroom. They want to win but they is convenient. If it is convenient, they will play. Students don’t want to put down somebody else to do it. On the want to do what they want to do when they want to other hand, he has also observed that today when teams do it. Peer criticism used to be a strong factor in keeping play hard and win they are just as pleased or when training rules but today there is very little reprimanding they play hard and lose are just as blue as teams in of one teammate by another. If somebody is now seen the past used to be. breaking training, I don’t think anybody would stand up President Cratsley was also quick to reaffirm that “ the and say, ‘You are out of bounds.’ ” College’s intercollegiate athletic program is sensibly Observers of the Swarthmore sports scene also point out conceived and well integrated into the total educational an intensification of a kind of show-me attitude toward program, encouraging participation by a large percentage coaching and authority that has been a Swarthmore of men and women in a wide variety of sports for an phenomenon for years. “Swarthmore athletes won’t take institution our size. I think it adds a real strength the half-time hollering and screaming from coaches; to the College.” they want a seminar rather than a shouting session.” Dean Edward Skeath ’58, who in 1958 set a record in According to Professor Blackburn, learning is a very the 440 which still stands, comments on individual sports: important dimension of athletics for Swarthmore “Today’s runners seem to take their sport more seriously students. “ When a Swarthmore athlete takes two hours than those of recent years. They run 13,14, and 15 a day to play a sport,” he says, “he wants it to be worth miles a day and think nothing of it. Steve Lubar runs it. If he goes to practice and finds he has to fiddle around twice a day and swims at noontime.” the first half hour, he will start coming a half hour later.” Another former Swarthmore athlete turned administrator, When President Courtney Smith discussed intercollegiate David Walter ’62, assistant dean of admissions, says athletics in 1960 (Alumni Bulletin, October, 1960), SWARTHMORE ALUMNI ISSUE 0CT< ^ he defined the main problem facing the College’s reasons have ditched a team—without sense of athletic program as “ whether we can be both amateur commitment or loyalty to the group, without a sense of and excellent.” He defined an amateur as one who responsibility to others. Third, our defensiveness in the face of those who do not enjoy sports or who do not “desires to play the game as well as he can play it with believe in them. I feel sorry for those who do not enjoy the time and the effort which he feels free to withdraw them, and I disagree with those who do not believe in f°r from things which he considers more important.” their value, regretting that they see life as so limited in President Smith then recognized three factors which its possibilities. But surely we are big enough at s made the problem of being both amateur and excellent Swarthmore to tolerate these differences, as we tolerate difficult: others, and those who do enjoy sports and believe in their value ought not to feel defensive about them. The fact that the. teams with which we are entitled Courtney Smith’s remarks remain valid twelve years jq t° be measured for excellence—those similar in size and academic standards and athletic policy—do not later. The factors and attitudes which at that time surround us in great quantity . .; the number of increased the difficulty of being both amateur and nts intercollegiate sports in which we field teams . excellent concern coaches and students today, (Surely we are right, though, in believing that it is complicated and exaggerated by a recent phenomenon, ing more important to have one man running cross country the counter-culture ethic as described earlier by dins an<* an°ther playing soccer while a third plays Jack Scott. football, than to have two additional substitutes for each position in football. .); the very machinery of We invite you to listen in on two frank discussions of up our academic program—long afternoon Honors intercollegiate athletics at Swarthmore today on the seminars, unusually long laboratories, even classes that following pages. The first is an abbreviation of two lit meet in the afternoon. three-hour talk sessions in front of a tape recorder by j He also said that Swarthmore made difficult the problem seventeen athletes; the second is an abbreviation of a jje excellent though amateur by three attitudes two-hour tape recording session with four full-time that were unnecessary: coaches and the trainer. In the choice of athletes every effort was made to include as wide a variety of viewpoints First, the mistaken idea of some students who enjoy as possible.