SCHOOL "POT HUNTERS"

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 3

SCHOOL "POT HUNTERS"

DANGERS OF .VALUABLE PRIZES.

If the public schoolboy a "pot-hunter" and a lover of the limelight? asks a, London 'caper. Tho headmasters, judging from their conference decision at Oxford recently, are much afraid he may become so, a. feai produced in some measure by the organisation of running and jumping championships, for schoolboys, and-a plea for more school ■ cricket matches at Lord's, said, perhaps, a school rowing competition at. Henley. With a. racket championship, a talk even of lawn tennis championships, there, is danger of turning the schoolboy into a sort of allround' professional long before his time. The load against more championships, more "pots," more limelight comes very suitably from Mr. Yaiigkan, , the new headmaster of Rugby, who has won a certain pro-eminence among his colleagues, and has come to. Rugby when its athletic efficiency is high: Mr. Montagu, for example, in his last year at Rugby, was' vone of tho best schoolboy runners ever produced. .' '„ _ ... Some schools are making a determined eot against tho high value of prizes at school sports. It was said, for example, at Gresham's School,' Holt, Norfolk, that some of the keenest school sports over held were during the years:when tickots instead of prizes were given! It is cer.tain that the keenest matches are those held on the school grounds between old orjponents, such as Charterhouse and Westminster, Shrewsbury and Rossall, Brndfieldh-aiid Radlev, whore there is no prize and no limelight; and athletics proper am being savrd from excessively valuable "pots" by the new and admirable svstpm of relay racing. What do the schoolboys think?