Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/175

 the loose dissipated habits of a young fellow changed completely because he developed a desire for athletic success and was willing to learn self-repression and self-control in order to attain his desire. The athlete, too, who might have a tendency to break training or to yield to the temptation to immoral practices is frequently held somewhat in restraint by public opinion as expressed by the undergraduate crowd. The athlete who would risk the success of his team by indulging in dissipations of any sort would soon find himself, in most college communities, pretty thoroughly in disfavor. Very few of us realize, I imagine, just what part this fear of public opinion has played in our own individual cases in keeping us in the straight moral path; sometimes when we should be inclined to hold that it was our staunch principles which held us back, it was quite as likely the fear of what the neighbors would say if they should find out our irregularities. We say, often, that we don't care what people think of us, but when we say it we are joking.

The training which the athlete gets is not advantageous merely from a physical standpoint; I have many times been convinced that it is least valuable from such a standpoint, because the college athlete is not infrequently overtrained, and when he gets out of college and relaxes this training he finds himself in a critical if not in a dangerous condition. The chief advantage that accrues from athletic training is its effect upon the man's judgment and upon his character. The man wanting to make an athletic team in a big university can not afford to yield easily to discouragement; if he does he will never make the team.