Tennessee Wesleyan College - Nocatula Yearbook (Athens, TN)

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Miklii- GIRLS IN ATHLETICS They are tanned in the face by the shining suns and blow- ing winds. Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength. They know hew to swim, to row, to ride, wrestle, shoot, run. strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves. They are ultimate in their own right, they are calm, clear, well posed of themselves. It was many years ago when the poet Whitman wrote those words but this graduating class of Tennessee Wesleyan and the future graduating classes are seeing and will see it come true. It was of the girls he was speaking. We were looking thru the Exponent issues of the nineties just the other day and lo and behold here was a specimen of the discreet, shy, but somewhat gay it is told) nineties. Her dress, her expression and everything about her qualified her for a spectator in the athletic contests of her day. Not so today. The girls of Tennessee Wesleyan although they were treated somewhat as a side issue, provided witii only one activity and clothed in antiquated uniforms came out about fifteen strong for basketball and rivaled the bo s in ability and activity. More power to the girls. Here ' s hoping that some day they will have tennis teams, hockev teams, swimming teams, coaches and equipment, and that the Walt Whitman prophecy will be even truer than it is to- day. GRADUATING ATHLETES When the thump of the pigskin and the thud thud of the basketball is first heard next year no two of the graduating Wesleyan athletes will find themselves trying out for the same team, for the six graduating letter men are dispersing to all points cf the collegiate globe. Fred Whitehead, the only four letter man in the group will st.ll be competing for the big W. But this time it will be a W of another color. It seems that old John when he passed thru this section of the country also founded colleges in Ken- tucky and Ohio. It is at Kentucky Wesleyan where Fred will betake his lumbering frame and his Olympic manner. Howard Guthrie, letter man in two sports, baseball and basketball will follow John ' s trail out to Ohio and try his batting eye at Ohio Wesleyan. Sweeney Jenkins, who earned his yellow W as a member of this year ' s only thrice defeated basketball team, doesn ' t want to get too far from home. He will go to U. T. Wilsie Wilder, for three years tackle, seems to be having a hard time making up his mind (he ' s probably waiting for Bill to make up hersi where he will finally betake his athlet- ic form and argumentative mind. He has Mercer University in mind right now. Fuzzy Green, the smallest man in the Wesleyan back- field, will go back on his Alma Mater, Alabama, and try his luck at Auburn. Red Latham, who matched Wilsie Wilder at tackle, savs that he will forsake the athletic field and locker room and take on professorial habits at the beginning of the next school year. He will try his hand at school teaching. TENNIS AND BASEBALL @ Tennis is a coming Sport at Wesleyan. Besides the vari- ous amateurs who play for well deserved pleasure in front of Petty every evening. Wesleyan supported a tennis team which need not look askance from anyone. The team composed of Jerry Vestal, John Thomas, Raul Leon. Kyle Haynes and Howard Guthrie, up to date has played four matches. In the match with Hiwassee College, the first of the sea- son, they swept the docket clean, taking every match. Mary- ville College fell before them 5 to 2. They dropped matches to U. of Chattanooga and Baylor. While the college supports no official baseball team, thru the efforts of Coach Haynes the boys have banded themselves together into a nine which has won four and lost one game. A tattered looking bunch they were with uniforms of every- body from the Chattanooga Lookouts, to uniforms which have no right to be called uniforms, but nevertheless they pounded the old pill all over the field. Probably with the showing that nine men can make with no effort at school sponsorship, the school will see fit to put out a baseball team in the future. 17

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FOOTBALL REVIEW 9 Outside of one basketball game and one or two football games the Wesleyan students have nothing to be ashamed of in the way of athletics. When a team is beaten by a superior team there is nothing to be ashamed of but when an inferior team humbles it, then. there is something to regret. Looking back over the football season we find that the team won five and lost four games. They started out like a house afire when they took the game from Maryville Col- lege, a team with a superior rating, by a score of 13 to 6. As the season progressed the team had its ups and downs One Saturday it would look like a team of well trained col- legians and then it would play the game of a country high school. The two games that the Coach and team regretted were the King game and the Bryson game. The King game went fourteen to 6 and the Bryson game 24 and 6. These games went to teams which football experts judged inferior to Wes- leyan — therefore the blot on the Escutcheon. The two games which the Wesleyan students have the right to be most proud of were the Union game which they t ook by a score of 46 to 0, and the showing against U. T. Frosh. Although the Frosh game was dropped by a score of 34 to 0, it was a good game from the Wesleyan stand- point. The Frosh had their best team in years. They had the Wesleyan eleven outweighed much. They had reserve material galore — and they used all of these advantages. Six of the Wesleyan players were carried off the field and when the game ended few Wesleyan regulars were in the lineup. Scoring for the nine games give Wesleyan a composite- score of 216 and her opponents 118. ATHLETICS AND SCHOLARSHIPS 9 Athletics are popularly thought of as a barrier to good scholarship and it is always a subject of front page interest when a great athlete takes a Rhodes Scholarship or some similar scholarship recognition. The public in general thinks of athlet s as stud ents who have perfectly marvelous muscles but whose grades read like the thermometer of a polar expedition. The athletes of the graduating class this year thoroughly disprove that athletics are a bar to good scholarship. The valedictorian of the class has had an athletic career running four years back. He has captained two teams this year and has always participated in athletics the year round, taking part n baseball, basketball and football. Of the ether men of major athletic standing who are grad- uating three are rated by the faculty and fellow students as excellent students and the remainder as students of mors than the average ability and industry. In this group it would seem that athletics stimulated the mind. ATHLETIC CUP © Many Wesleyan Seniors have never noticed the Athletic Cup which sets in Mr. Currier ' s office. This is practically the enly athletic award given at Wesleyan and deserves mention. This cup was proposed six years ago by Messrs. Roberts and Blair and was given by them to the school. They proposed that each year the names of students most valuable to the team, selected by the squad, should be engraved on the cup. This year the name of Roy Walden was engraved under those cf Joe Durham, Bullets Boyer, Bud Strange, Here Alley and Rube McCray. Two graduating players this year have played with ail these men. Thev are Wilsie Wilder and Fred Whitehead. 16

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BASKETBALL ® By far the most successful team on the campus this year was the basketball team captained by Fred Whitehead. A representative lineup of this team which won thirteen games and lost only three would be: Hanna CF); Vestal (F); Whitehead CO); Walker (G.i; Posey CG). Substitutes for Wesleyan: Fulkerson G . Jenkins CF), Davis (F), Ragan (C), Walker, Guthrie, (F). This team started out in a manner which made the stu- dents heave a big sigh and say: ' We won ' t get to cheer much this winter, but after dropping games to Birmingham South- ern and U. T„ bath four year colleges, they went to the finals in the Southern Junior College Tournament at Asheville without suffering a defeat. The play cf the team was characterized by a fast, clean dribbling and passing attack and a clcse five man defence. This method of play made them almost unbeatable. George Hanna always led the floor offense and the ball usually landed in the basket from the hands of Whitehead or Vestal to whcm he fed the ball. The last home game was the best game played in the Wes- leyan gym last winter. In this game the Bulldog ' s won from the Kncxville Y, 37 to 11. Knoxville was rated as a mighty gccd independent team. The true metal of the team was tested on the trip which ended up the scheduled season. Wesleyan was slated to lose at least two out of three of the trip games and she came thru winning them all. The last game at Sue Bennet was the clcsest of the season, the Bulldogs taking it in the last min- ute of play by a field goal which put them one point in the lead. At the tournament in Asheville, the Asheville Citizen gave them an equal rating with any team there. They won their preliminary games by large scores and only lost by five points to Bluefield College, of Bluefield, West Virginia. And next year is coming. SPORT COMMENTS The Sports Editor has suffered thru this year, making navy a comment on the subject of sports in general and as he is now singing his swan song as a contributor to the columns of the noble Nocatula he is going to give the subscribers of this sheet a few of his mental verdicts on the subject of sports and sport editors w.fchout extra charge. College sports have suffered some very justifiable criticism from the academicians in the past few years because of the tendency of sports to usurp the first page in college newspapers, relegating such things as literary societies, schol- arship societies, dramatics, etc., to positions under ten point headlines and on the pages where advertising predominates. Commercialism has also been leading these hounds of re- form a merry chase as has the tendency of the coaches to dictate the policy of the school. One Chinese American stu- dent described the Arr.erican College as an athletic institu- tion where certain of the more feeble were afforded an oppor- tunity for study. Our institution is more cr lees free of all these so called evils. Inevitably sj because it is not heavily enough en- dowed to be commercial and because denominational sm is so prevalent that any other icrce must lift its head with fear and trembling for it will sure get it knocked down again. The trouble in cur school is not too much athletics, but too little athletics. By this we mean that the athletics of tne school is carried on by too few people. Although the modern youth is much touted for his strength of body and freedom of spirit, it remains that the average boy is constitutionally averse to physical exercise and that the average college graduate has a physical development which makes him unfit for a hundred yard dash and common house labor. This may be the fault of the modern trend of college thought — that mind is more important than the body— or the modem methods of operation, which is such in the large college that none but the exceptinoal can stand the commer- cialized competition and in the smaller colleges that so lit- tle equipment is offered and so little variety of sports that, it is soon taken up by the select few. As we see it this should be combated in two ways — tif it should be combated at all and if we are right in our premise ' — first the college student should be taught the value of physical perfection, not merely from a utilitarian standpoint, for it is the mind that earns the living in this age, but from