nOs

stamina, and an understanding and practice of true
sportsmanlike standards and ideals, all of which

may be summed up under the one ohrase, sound moral
character.

In order to insure such favorable outcomes
you must be sure that your son is working under
directors who both understand and practice the train-
ing of their charges along these lines. Since my
time is brief I shall use high school athletics as
an illustration, with the understanding that the
same principles hold for work done in Scouting, in
the Y.M.C.A., in other gymnasiums and organizations.

In the high school the first requisite is
the combination of a clean principal and a clean
coach. Of the two the coach is more imnortant, since
he takes immediate charge over your son. It is,
however, difficult for a good coach to get the best
results unless he is co-operating with a decent
principal. The ideal coach is the man who understands,
of course, how to instruct boys in playing properly
the game which he is supervising. But in addition
to that he must be a man of high moral character,
have definitely high ideals of sportsmanship, and
enough backbone to enforce these ideals upon his
boys. In addition he should have a thorough knowl-
edge of the human organism and if possible some
knowledge of medicine, at least to the extent of
being able to care for minor injuries, to understand
proper diet, and most important of all, to understand
just what demands can be made on the physical ability
of immature boys.

Many coaches are selected simply because: they
have won a varsity letter in their sport. The nosses-
sion of a varsity letter does not in itself indicate
that any of these characteristics are present, even
the first. Frequently a varsity athlete knows how to
play his own position alone, and has no conception
of the technique of the game as a whole. He has been
accustomed to work with men of some maturity and marked
physical strength, and so he makes the same demands of
growing boys that he would make of mature men, with
the result of overtrained and ultimately broken down
physical organisms. Many high school athletes are
actually burnt out. That means that the nervous sys-
tem is impaired so that the athlete does not have a
reserve fund of nerve force which will carry him through
physical and emotional crises in life. That is the |
reason so many prominent athletes are carried iL off ; oy.