The history of Colby College, Part 67

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716

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Erection of the new field house on Mayflower Hill gave Colby the largest seating capacity of any basketball arena in Maine at that time. It was dedicated as the Herbert E. Wadsworth Field House on December 11, 1948, in memory of the former chairman of the Board of Trustees, who had been an ardent supporter of Colby sports since his graduation in 1892. Shortly before his death the Ath- letic Council had awarded Mr. Wadsworth a Colby "C", fitting prelude to naming the Field House for him in 1948. The dedication was marked by the first game played in the new building, a State Series contest with Maine, which Colby won 60 to 45.

So many men have stood out conspicuously on Colby basketball teams that mention of any might well be unfair to dozens omitted. It is a tribute to Coach Williams that he had a commendable habit of turning out teams rather than indi- vidual stars.

HOCKEY

Something similar to hockey was being played at Colby as early as 1887. The students had succeeded in clearing ice on the Kennebec for a rink. The Echo reported:

A very interesting game of polo was played on the rink Saturday eve- ning between the Colbys and the Coburns. Although the latter entered the contest with full confidence of winning, they were wiped out by a score of 6 to 1, and evidently do not care to play against the Colbys again.3

The next winter saw the opening of a rink in a vacant lot in the city. Again the Echo commented:

An out-door rink has been opened downtown, lighted by electricity and furnished with waiting rooms. As long as there was good skating on the river, it had competition, but now that the river ice is covered with snow the rink is in for a lot of patronage.4

Skating, with occasional informal hockey teams, received sporadic atten- tion until after the First World War. In 1919 there was talk of building a hockey rink, but no action. With the coming of Harry Edwards as Director of Athletics in 1921 interest was revived and hockey was accepted as an intercollegiate sport in the following year. A league was formed among the four Maine colleges and two games were played with each college. The Colby rink was built and flooded on the back campus where later the Field House stood. After two years Maine

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withdrew from the league and in 1934 Bates also abandoned the sport. For the past quarter of a century Colby and Bowdoin have been the lone defenders of hockey among the colleges of the state.

The first coach of hockey was a member of the faculty, J. R. Marsh. He was succeeded by another teacher, Professor Euclid Helie, until Eddie Roundy took over in 1925. Five years later a real hockey enthusiast and a skilled player in his own student days took over. Bill Millett made hockey a major sport at Colby.

Although the Athletic Association had recognized hockey in 1922, it was several years before the sport obtained favored status. In 1923 Professor Edwards pleaded that the Association buy a pair of hockey guards if the old ones could not be found. The appropriation for hockey was only $50. But at the end of the winter the Association voted to pay outstanding bills of the hockey season, amounting to $83.28. On April 4, 1923, the Council voted that the Association include hockey as a sponsored minor sport, provided the College would furnish a man for the upkeep of the rink. The College agreed and in the 1924 season hockey joined the accredited list with baseball, football and track.

When plans were made to build the Field House on the old campus, the College had already obtained possession of the Bangs property on College Avenue, where Colby's first infirmary for men was established. That property stretched from Main to Front streets, and the big lot behind the house offered a fine, nearby area for a hockey rink. There a well-flooded rink, surrounded by high boards, was in use for several years. But care of that rink proved so expensive and certain features of it became so unsatisfactory that by 1930 the Council was renting use of the South End Rink far down on Water Street, and there the college games were usually played until facilities were available at Mayflower Hill. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to open a rink again on the campus. An area for women's skating had been flooded behind Foss Hall in 1937. The hockey team did use that rink for practice, but not for games, in 1937, but at the end of the season there arose such a protest from the women that the team never again returned to the scene of its crime.

After the sports program had been moved to Mayflower Hill, hockey at first fared little better than it had on the old campus. After Millett's long record, coaches came and went in rapid succession: Romeo Lemieux for one year, Nelson Corey for three, Wilfred Rancourt for two, and Bernard LaLiberte for one. Then came Jack Kelley and the Alfond Arena, and hockey was at last a true major sport.

Even before Kelley had been appointed, a group of alumni were determined to secure an indoor rink. They were convinced that hockey had a permanent place in northern New England, so close to the Canadian border, where the game was exceedingly popular. But they were equally convinced that only an enclosed rink would permit regular hockey schedules. Gordon Jones, 1940, a member of the Board of Trustees, and Joe Wallace, 1945, both brilliant hockey players in their undergraduate days, sparked the movement. Harold Alfond, a Maine manu- facturer who had already been a generous benefactor of the College, became interested. A stroke of inspiration prompted the proposal that the artificial rink be a community project, and that its ice be open for the use of citizens of all ages at stated hours.

It had originally been intended to have merely a protected outdoor rink. The decision for an enclosed building adjoining the Field House as fitting annex had come only when it appeared that additional funds could be obtained. When 350

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tons of Warrenite had been spread on the floor, ten miles of pipes laid upon it, then 350 more tons of the asphalt mixture covered the pipes, the eagerly waiting skaters knew that completion was near. When college carpenters erected the dash boards, when the lighting had been installed, when the freezing apparatus was connected, all was at last ready. The dedication occurred on the evening of December 15, 1955, when the new structure became the Harold Alfond Arena.

Instead of the originally intended $87,000, the final cost had risen to $200,000, but all agreed that the structure was worth the money. Besides at last providing a place for uninterrupted hockey schedules, it served to cement rela- tions between town and gown as few other projects had ever done. Not only was the rink made available to skaters, from tiny tots to aged veterans, but it also became the site for home games of the Bruins, Waterville's professional hockey club.

Except for Jack Coombs in baseball few Colby athletes have achieved na- tional fame. One of those few was Joe Wallace, 1945, the hockey player who later joined with Gordon Jones in a campaign for the arena. He was a member of the American Olympic Hockey Team.

TRACK

The beginning of organized sports now known as Track and Field came to Colby in 1879 with the organization of an annual field day. Of course there had previously been a lot of running and jumping about the campus and an oc- casional class contest. In 1879 the students decided to start a Field Day Asso- ciation.

In the early years the events of Field Day usually consisted of a hundred yard dash, a mile run, hurdle race, mile walk, broad jump, high jump, hop-step-and- jump, and a standing long jump. Events that would now be considered unusual, not to say eccentric, were a stilt race, a potato race, and throwing the baseball. In 1883 a 17-pound hammer was added which Tilton threw 75 feet. In that 1883 meet the referee was Professor Albion Woodbury Small, who soon would become President of the College.

The 1890's saw the addition of an important event, bicycle racing. Vehicles used were the old high-wheeled bicycles, because not until nearly the dawn of the new century did the "safety bicycle" become common. The bicycle became exceedingly popular, and the Waterville Bicycle Club enrolled many members. Despite frequent accidents, the old high wheels enlisted many college racers, and the bicycle events became features of Field Day.

In 1895 Colby entered the Maine Intercollegiate Track and Field Association, and thereafter an annual intercollegiate meet was held in rotation at the four colleges. The first meet, in 1895, was in fact held in Waterville. It was won by Bowdoin, followed by Maine, Colby and Bates in that order. In fact the Bowdoin team was so strong that it scored 99 points, while the other three colleges combined accumulated only 36 points.

Why track should turn out to be the weakest sport at Colby is not easy to explain, though perhaps the lack of a coach specifically employed for track may have something to do with the decline in recent years. Football became so prom- inent that it came to be the practice to engage a man as a line coach or an assistant coach of that sport and incidentally assign to him the additional post of track.

Colby's best record in track and field was made in the period between 1910 and 1930, and during most of those years Mike Ryan was coach. In fact two

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Irishmen, Ryan at Colby and Jack Magee at Bowdoin, dominated track events in Maine for many years. To hear those two belligerent Hibernians argue about details of a meet was an experience long to be remembered. Colby never won a Maine intercollegiate meet, and only three times (in 1900, 1914, and 1943) did she take second place. In the 60 meets held by the four colleges since 1895, Colby has finished fourth in 41 of them, and only once in the last fourteen years has she scored as many as 12 points. In the 1958 meet not a single place went to a Colby contestant.

Colby's best years in track were 1911 through 1916. One of the best scores ever made by a Colby team was 30 points in 1911, and even that high score brought nothing better than third place. It was one of the state's most exciting and closely fought meets. Maine won with 41 points, barely nosing out Bates with 39. Bowdoin, for many years the champion, trailed with only 16. The period saw the acme of Colby's famous dash man, Frank Nardini. In the 1911 meet Nardini won three first places: hundred, two-twenty, and broad jump. Sam Herrick won the high jump, and Sam Cates unexpectedly took the half mile run from the heralded Holden of Bates. Thus 25 of Colby's 30 points were won by three men taking five first places. It was the failure to pick up second and third places amounting to more than five points that doomed Colby to third posi- tion in the meet.

In 1912 Colby again stood third with 26 points and in 1913 her 19 points was good for the same position. Then in 1914 the Colby team scored 37 points for second place and the highest score ever made by a Colby track team in the Maine annual meet. Maine won the meet easily, but Colby's 37 points were more than the combined total of Bates and Bowdoin. Of the 59 track and field meets from 1895 to 1958, Bowdoin won 32, Maine 24, and Bates three.

A number of Maine Intercollegiate track records have been held briefly by Colby men. Nardini held the two-twenty jointly with another man at 22.2 seconds. Mittlesdorf twice lowered the same record, first to 22 seconds, and later to 21.8. Meanix held the quarter mile record for eleven years after he breasted the tape in 51 seconds in 1913. Johnny Daggett made a record broad jump of 23 feet, 23/8 inches, in 1939; and Herrick tied the record with a man from each of the other three colleges when he cleared the high jump bar at 5 feet, 8 inches, in 1912. Only one Colby track record still stands. In 1940 Gilbert Peters, a Fairfield boy, established a new high jump record of 6 feet, 15/8 inches. The next year saw Peters beat his own record by clearing 6 feet, 33/4 inches, a state record that he still holds.

Although "hare and hounds" had been an informal Colby sport in the 1880's, the Colby cross-country teams did not come into prominence until half a century later. The long-legged country boys from the University of Maine usually domi- nated that sport. But in 1933 a little fellow from a small Maine town brought Colby national renown. Clifford Veysey was a natural long distance runner, with unusual stamina and bursts of speed at the right moments. After he won the New England cross-country meet in 1933, the Athletic Council decided to send him to the national meet. Against the finest competition in the nation, Veysey captured third place.

Colby alumni who themselves competed in track or were otherwise devoted to that fine individual sport have long lamented the College's declining interest in what they still regard as a real test of a man's worth.

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TENNIS

Lawn tennis came to Colby about 1880, and "lawn" it indeed was. Not the smooth, closely clipped grass courts of the Longwood Cricket Club, but areas marked out on grass, crudely kept down with a scythe. The sport was flourishing in 1883, when the Echo commented:

A new lawn tennis club has been organized in the freshman class. They have purchased an elaborate set, consisting of a rope, four shingles and a rubber ball. They may be seen any favorable afternoon on the court of the old railroad track.5

In 1891 came a demand for better courts, although, astonishingly, a total of ten were already in use. Tennis had become so popular that every fraternity tried to lay out a grassed area near its living quarters. The women had a good court, and the Athletic Association maintained several. It was the Echo of which Frank- lin Johnson was editor that sounded the cry for improvement.

Tennis claims more than the usual number of devotees this spring. Three new courts have already been made and the old ones are all in use. We must again urge the oft repeated suggestion for better courts. Of the ten now occupied only two or three are suitable for good tennis, and even those are not the best. We have not a good clay court on the campus. So long as we are without clay courts we cannot expect to com- pete with men habituated to play on hard surface. Clay courts would soon justify their cost. While we are laying out a number of inferior courts, we could better afford to make a single good one. Until the de- sired end is secured the Echo will not cease to harp on the same chord.6

In a few years the Echo's importunity was rewarded. Clay courts began to appear in increasing numbers - two of them between South College and the Chapel, two near Coburn Hall, one behind the DKE House and one at Phi Delta Theta. Lawn tennis disappeared and the hard surface game took its place.

Until Mike Loebs, as coach of tennis, began to develop championship teams on Mayflower Hill, Colby did not fare well in intercollegiate competition in that sport. Her best remembered tennis player of the old days is Marston Morse, 1914, who for three successive years vied with Burleigh Martin of Bowdoin for the state championship. Morse later became a mathematician of international fame and an associate of Einstein's in the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton.

The new courts at Mayflower Hill gave pronounced stimulus to tennis at Colby. That battery of expertly constructed, fast-drying courts, half of them clay and the other half asphalt, was the gift of Mrs. Edna McClymonds Wales of Massillon, Ohio, and Northport, Maine, in memory of her son, Sergeant Walter McClymonds Wales, who lost his life in World War II. On those courts Mike Loebs developed winning teams and outstanding players. Three Colby men have been State Singles Champion during the last twelve years: Nelson Everts in 1949 and 1950; John Marshall in 1956, and Grant Hendricks in 1958 and 1959. Marshall and John Shute were State Doubles Champions in 1956.

Colby won the State Tennis Tournament in 1953, 1958 and 1959, and tied with Bowdoin in 1954 and with Bates in 1956. Since 1952 Colby has won 56 matches and lost 15.

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GOLF

It was Bill Millett, the hockey enthusiast, who also made golf a recognized Colby sport. In all the first 150 years of its history Colby never boasted a golf course, although Franklin Johnson intended that one should eventually be built on the broad college slope between the circular drive and the Messalonskee stream.

Even before the move to Mayflower Hill, Millett had developed interest among the Colby golfers. In 1933 he persuaded Dr. George Averill to finance Millett's informal team to a few tournaments, and asked the Athletic Council for recognition. The Council voted "that the boys be given the name of the Colby Golf Team under the supervision of Coach Millett." In 1934 a regular golf sched- ule was approved, but even then the Council would assume no financial obligation. In a few years, however, after the department's reorganization under Loebs, golf became a fully accredited minor sport and Colby golf teams have won their share of victories. The home links for Colby golfers have been the grounds of the Waterville Country Club, with which the College has long maintained close relations.

WINTER SPORTS

It was not until the College had moved to Mayflower Hill that winter sports got a firm foothold at Colby. Not that no interest had been shown earlier; many attempts were made to arouse enthusiasm for skiing and snowshoeing, and long before the move to the Hill the Winter Carnival had become a regular feature of the winter season. It was true, however, that often the only popular event of the carnival was the ball. Students who seemed to be "dance crazy" were lethargic toward winter sports.

The first member of the Colby staff to show interest in any outdoor winter sport except hockey was Mike Ryan, who in 1920 presented plans for the forma- tion of an Outing Club and the holding of a few ski and snowshoe events on a single day. When Harry Edwards took charge of the department in 1921, he showed active interest in winter sports, but was unable to arouse student enthusi- asm. Not until 1926 was Colby represented officially at the University of Maine Winter Carnival. In that year the Athletic Council appropriated twenty dollars to pay expenses of a winter sports team to the carnival at Orono, but the appropri- ation was not made willingly. Evidently President Roberts had supported Ed- wards' plea for official sponsorship and had asked the Council to make an appropriation, for the Council records tell us, "Voted that President Roberts be informed that this support is made under strenuous protest."

In 1927 the Council voted "to support a winter sports team provided there is enough interest." By 1930 the number of winter sports participants had be- come sufficient to warrant arrangements between the College and the Mountain Farm Ski Slope. Later the College obtained a lease of the slope, where the Out- ing Club constructed and maintained a hut, laid out a jump, a slalom course, and other facilities for competitive ski events. On the occasion of each Winter Carni- val, buses were chartered to carry students and other spectators to the races and jumping contests at the Mountain Farm Slope, where often as many as six other colleges placed teams in the competition. For many years the Outing Club had as faculty adviser the head of the Department of Geology, first in the person of Professor Richard Lougee, and then of his successor, Professor Donaldson Koons, and both men worked with Professor Loebs to make the Winter Carnival

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successful. Officially the carnival was sponsored and directed by the Outing Club, but the competitive events came under the direction of the Department of Health and Physical Education.

After 1948, in connection with the Mountain Farm Slope, smaller practice slopes were opened on the campus, instructors were employed, and skiing be- came popular. In the Women's Division alone as many as two hundred pairs of skis were sometimes stacked in a basement room in their Union. After the public ski slope was developed at Sugar Loaf Mountain, near Kingfield, weekend ski trips to that site became increasingly popular, and one goal long sought by the enthusiasts had been achieved: to make skiing not merely a varsity sport for competition, but a sport, like tennis, in which hundreds of students could partici- pate for the fun of participation.

The Colby Outing Club did much more than direct a winter carnival. It had charge of all out-of-door activities except the organized teams. It conducted mountain climbing trips to Katahdin, Bigelow, Saddleback, and other Maine peaks. In 1942 it opened the Great Pond Camp and Lodge, a property secured by the College on the largest lake of the Belgrade chain, twelve miles from Waterville. There, on what had once been a private summer estate with several buildings, the Outing Club offered facilities for swimming, boating, fishing, and outdoor recreation.

SOCCER

In the late 1950's soccer became a popular game. Its ardent promoter was Professor Loebs, whose teams were so well coached that they seldom lost a game. By 1960 games were regularly arranged with a few other colleges, Colby fielding both a varsity and a freshman team, and "Mike" Loebs had won a repu- tation throughout New England as a successful soccer enthusiast.

ON THE WATER

The previous chapter has mentioned Colby's early attempts to put boat crews on the Kennebec. Throughout the long history of the College, however, Colby athletes have been essentially land animals. In its otherwise excellent attention to physical education, Colby still lacked in 1960 a swimming pool. Hence the College has never had a swimming team, and the only opportunity has been use of the Outing Club camp or the Adult Recreation Camp in the summer, or a clandestine dip in the forbidden waters of Johnson Pond. Arrangements have sometimes been made for occasional use of the indoor pool of the Waterville Boys Club, but even when that facility is available it is two miles distant from the campus.

If Colby students had little opportunity for exercise in the water, they did seek in the early 1950's for a chance to exercise on its surface. This was not a revival of the old rowing crews, but rather the inauguration of the Colby Yacht Club. Sparked by a few enthusiastic yachtsmen, the club for several years com- peted in college regattas, notably on the Charles River. It had to borrow its boats, though for a time it did own a single craft, moored at the dock of the Outing Club Camp on Great Pond. Dependent on a few ardent workers, the Yacht Club lost support when its originators graduated and by 1959 had become defunct. While it lasted, however, it had the distinction of being the only Colby sport in which both men and women participated on the same team.

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TROPHIES

Besides trophies offered through the Maine Intercollegiate Athletic Associ- ation for supremacy in various sports, a number of awards are made annually at Colby College. Among them are the following:

The Herbert E. Wadsworth award to the most valuable football player.

The Edward C. Roundy award to the most valuable baseball player.

The Robert Lafleur Memorial award to the most valuable basketball player.

The David Dobson Ski award to the most valuable member of the ski team.

The Ellsworth Millett award to the most valuable player in hockey.

The Norman Walker award to the hockey player showing most im- provement.

The J. Seelye Bixler award to the most valuable participant in varsity track.

The Shiro award to the basketball player showing most improvement. The "Ginger" Fraser award to the most outstanding non-letter member of the football squad.

The Donald Lake award to a member of the senior class who has shown outstanding athletic ability, leadership, and academic accomplish- ment.

The Norman White award to a member of the senior class for inspira- tional leadership and sportsmanship.

OUTSTANDING ATHLETES

He would be a bold man indeed who would dare to name Colby's leading athletes throughout the long history of sports at the College. Probably no two alumni would agree on listing the twenty-five best. When this historian asked five alumni long familiar with Colby sports to present such a list, he found so much difference of opinion and such a profusion of names that he gave up in despair. A lot of men are worthy of a place in Colby's athletic hall of fame. If, in closing this chapter, we mention a few names, it is with humble apology to those who could quite as well be included.

Many of the older alumni remember not only Jack Coombs, but such earlier athletes as Clayton Brooks and John Pugsley. Men of this historian's own under- graduate days, in the second decade of this century, still sing the praises of Ralph Good, Frank Nardini, "Ginger" Fraser, Eddie Cawley, Jack Lowney, Sam Cates, and Sam Herrick. Those of the 1920's remember best men like Bill Millett, Wally Donovan, Dick Drummond, "Bobby" Scott, and "Buzz" Burrill. The 1930 gradu- ates like to recall the Peabody brothers, "Paddy" Davan, Romeo Lemieux, Cliff Veysey, Bob LaFleur, and Charlie Hedwig. Although interrupted by the war, the 1940's brought to prominence the Shiro brothers, George Clark, Norman White, Joe Wallace, and Remo Verrengia. In the 1950's came the Jabar brothers, Ted Lallier, Frank Piacentini, Peter Cavari, and George Roden.

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The history of Colby College, Part 67

Author: Colby College Publication date: 1963 Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press Number of Pages: 716

Author: Colby College
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Waterville, Colby College Press
Number of Pages: 716