Athletic Scholarship Winners Not Candidates For Scrap-heap

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31092, 22 June 1966, Page 11

Athletic Scholarship Winners Not Candidates For Scrap-heap

athletic scholarships such as those under which the New Zealand athletes, A. G. Pyne and R. V. Johnson, are studying at the University of Los Angeles in California have nearly always been regarded with considerable suspicion by followers of the sport in this country.

Many consider that any promising athlete who accepts such a scholarship is destined to end up on the competitive scrap-heap within a very short time; that the intense competition will bum him out or at least force him to lose interest.

This is not strictly correct, although there is some foundation for such opinions. The New Zealand quartermile champion, D. W. Mackenzie, who spent much of his time with Johnson and Pyne while he was in America on a two-month visit, considers that the intense competition made it difficult for the athletes concerned, but emphasises that everyone there was in a similar position and most accepted it as a matter of course. ‘ Sometimes they are run pretty hard.” He cited the instance of Pyne having to compete for the University of California in a mile and a three-mile event on the same day. They did not always have to run in two

events at a meeting but on many occasions they were expected to. And they had little spare time. A New Zealand athlete suddenly thrown into the competitive cauldron usually took a complete season to settle down. Pyne was now in his second year and had got used to it.

He was now in very good shape and had run very ■well to take second place to G. Lingren in a recent three miles with a time of 13min 20.6 sec. Lingren had been in tremendous form, reeling off the first mile in tain 15sec, the second in Bmin 42sec and the third in 13min 12.8 sec.

Referring to the Empire Games selection, Mackenzie said: “I cannot see him (Pyne) missing.” He had had a setback two weeks ago with his examinations. “With

an athletic scholarship you have to do more than just run.” He had passed all his subjects and from now until the end of summer he could concentrate on athletics. “He should come through very well in the next few months,” Mackenzie said. Johnson, who unlike Pyne has already won a place in the games team as a 440 yards hurdler, was in very good form. He had been training very consistently and hard. A week ago he had recorded an astonishing 9.Bsec for 100 yards (while racing against Mackenzie) speed and strength, said Mackenzie.

While he was in America, Mackenzie met another New Zealand athlete who could make a name for himself in the near future. He is B. Milne, a former Canterbury athlete who set a New Zealand Universities record of Imin 51.8 sec for the halfmile in 1964.

Milne originally went to America on a Phillips scholarship and is now moving on to an athletics scholarship with the University of Arizona at Tucson. He has not been competing because of residential rules aimed at preventing universities trying to attract top athletes from one another. His best time so far is Imin 51.2 sec.

“I think we will be hearing quite a bit more of him,” Mackenzie said. “He has got a lot of potential.”