A GENTLER GAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

A GENTLER GAME.

West American School Prefers Rodeo to Football.

Quite recently there has been an outcry in New York about accidents at rodeo exhibitions, but in the West the rodeo is considered a gentle sport compared with American football. A Press Association message from Colorado Springs on September 23 states:— Football has been discarded for rodeo sports at the Cheyenne School here. Bucking horses and some wild steers will provide the fun. "I believe there is less danger of permanent injury in this than in football," said Dr. Lloyd Shaw, superintendent of the institution, a public grade and high .school with 400 students. "Some of the boys may get scratched a little, but that's all. "Aristotle, greatest of educators, sat on a corral fence and watched Alexander the Great tame a wild horse. I consider this a really good education."

The football field to-day was being surrounded by a corral fence. Gridiron uniforms were neglected in locker rooms as the lads went out in chaps and spurs. Dr. Shaw feels that the modern boy knows almost nothing of horses, a defect which several minutes each day aboard a rearing, raging broncho will undoubtedly remedy. "They will learn a great deal about horses," he said. "There will be no cruelty." The boys will ride first with a surcingle, thus avoiding the danger of dragging from stirrups. As they become more expert, they will use saddles. They will bulldog steers (or try) just as rodeo riders do, and their steers will be fullsized yearlings. Bill Evans and John Love, who have had Arizona experience, will be instructors. The boys hope, Dr. Shaw said, that their fall season will make expenses and pay for more and wilder horses. The plan is for five weeks of training and then a public rodeo.