DBPARTMblNT REPORTS. 119 



EEPORT OF THE DEPAETMENT OF PHYSICAL CULTURE. 



To President J. L. Snyder: 



The following is the report for the Department of Physical Culture 

 and Athletics for the year ending June 30th, 1908. 



It has been the aim of the department throughout the year to in- 

 terest as large a number of the young men as possible into taking 

 some work in the department, as well as to furnish wholesome recrea- 

 tion to the young men and the college community. With this object 

 in mind an effort has been made to widen the range of the work. 



As has been noted in previous reports, the physical culture branch 

 of the work is curtailed seriously on account of having no gymnasium 

 and no regular time available for the work. This lack of space and 

 time has made it impossible to reach a large number of the young 

 men. However, the usual work with Indian-clubs, dumb-bells, bar-bells, 

 free arm and breathing exercises was offered, while all the recreative 

 exercises, such as hand-ball, fencing, wrestling, apparatus work, tum- 

 bling, indoor baseball, etc., were promoted as far as possible. In the 

 several branches of athletics, baseball, football, basket-ball, track and 

 tennis, a very large number of the young men were induced to take 

 part by the encouragement of inter-hall, inter-class, inter-department, 

 and inter-society contests, in addition to the maintaining of the repre- 

 sentative college team in each branch. The college teams all had 

 successful years, easily leading all the state colleges in the major 

 sports, football, baseball, track and basket-ball ; not a defeat being 

 suffered at the hands of any state college in any of these branches dur- 

 ing the year. Considerable prominence and publicity was also secured 

 by the defeat of Wabash in football, Notre Dame University in a dual 

 track meet and by the work of the track team in the Western Con- 

 ference Meet in Chicago. 



The Third Annual Invitation Interscholastic Meet held on the colleiie 

 grounds May ISth, under the auspices of the department, was unusually 

 successful. Twenty-nine high-schools of the state sent representatives 

 and several hundred high school students from all parts of the state 

 spent the day at the college. 



The athletic field has been materially improved during the year. The 

 grand stand was moved to a more advantageous location, a substantial 

 bleacher was built, adding considerably to the seating capacity of the 

 field, the cement bridge and approach to the field was completed, while 

 a considerable amount of time and money was spent in tjuilding a 

 retaining bank at the east end as a protection against high water 

 and in improving the cinder track and the general equipment. 



A considerably larger proportion of the young men took advantage 

 of the privileges of the bath house this year than heretofore and the 

 fees from this source have been ample to take care of the rtinning ex- 

 penses of the department. 



In concluding mV report. I want to again call attention to the rie'ces- 



