Horace Mann Lincoln High School - Lincolnian Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Many of our more unforgettable experiences occur on H.M.-Lincoln athletic fields or in H.M.-Lincoln gymnasiums. Every student is required to participate in some phase of the athletic program each term. Early in the fall, the boys are usually requested to clean up the dirt play- ground.in preparation for girls' field hockey and speedball, and their own football scrimmages and soccer games. The fall season is perhaps the most difficult period for the athletic department to manage, for, because of an acute shortage of playing fields, recreation during the warm seasons of the school year is somewhat cramped. After the Thanksgiving holiday, the winter program begins and, under the expert guidance of the staff, even the most inept enthusiast gains a certain amount of pro- ficiency in at least one of the activities. Those who do not participate on varsity teams become graceful fencers and tumblers, spectacular floor hockey players, or hardy wrestlers and boxers. At the first signs of spring, the boys are again herded out to the playground, not only to be reconditioned by hours of sunshine, but once more to make the fields fit for the young lady softballers of H.M.-L. The sports year finally ends with the great annual field meet in which a large proportion of the student body competes for hard sought-after team points. ' While it would be hardly fair to say that athletics at Horace Mann-Lincoln take precedence over our academic studies, we can best determine its position in the school curriculum, perhaps, by judging its popularity within the student body. A1- though most of us often obtain health excuses for the most trivial ailments without the slightest compunction, few, if any, H.M.-Lincoln students have been known to wish themselves back in a mathematics or history class during their regularly sche- duled gymnasium period. We charged right through for the Orange and Blue Page 17

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gays' agicwfs' W X A HN 4 usa At the beginning of this year's soccer 5 5 ' or - f V - season, Coach Lott, to his dismay, found I:if'J.E9 NNX ,gf 5 that only twolettermen from the 1946 soccer ' , sl , If J I-M. - A squad had returned. With the longest sche- Qt dule in H.M.-Lincoln history to be faced, the season's outlook appeared rather grim. After several weeks of' drilling a squad com- Q posed mainly of boys who had plenty of fight but little experience, Coach finally arrived atastarting alignment for the team's first game. His judgment proved to be sound, as the team took control of the game from the very beginning and won going away. The second game was also a victory, though not such an easy one, over Horace Mann, by the score of 1-0. As the old saying goes, however, All good things must come to an end. The tea.m's modest two-game winning streak was broken in a game with Hackley. After a tie with Staten Island, three successive victories followed, but H.M.- L. eventually lost its chance for the M. A. A. P. S. title in its encounter with Brooklyn Friends. The end of the season saw Horace Mann-Lincoln finish with six victories, three losses, and two ties. The team scored twenty-three goals, while our defense let nine go through for the opposition. Despite the fact that only three veterans from the 1946-47 boys' basketball team returned to school this year, the varsity squad was potentially the best that H.M.-Lincoln had seen in many years. The team started the season well by trouncing New York Friends in apreliminary scrimmage, and its first two regularly scheduled ri- vals. After those victories the team dropped three straight games and turnedagood sea- son into a mediocre one. The rest of the schedule was characterized by the inevitable alteration of victories and losses until, toward the end of the season, the boys turned in what was probably the greatest upset of the year by defeating a favored Franklin team, 46-42, in an overtime period. WTh1s is a basketball... Page 18