Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/45

Rh Tacoma boys were sadly outclassed. The Seattle players were heavier, had more experience, and showed more thorough coaching. Then, too, they had picked up many of the finer points of the game while watching Coach Knight drill the University of Washington team. But the Tacoma team practiced diligently, and when the second game was played showed themselves practically the equals of their opponents. In this game each team made a touchdown, but Seattle kicked the goal and Tacoma failed. Thus Seattle won 6-5. Hence the inter-scholastic championship of the Sound cities belongs to the Seattle High School.

A word of advice to football players may not be out of place here. Football games are played and championships are won, not in the columns of the newspapers, but on the gridiron. The players and managers of the Northwest teams may learn this as well now as any time; and the sooner they learn it the better. It is a pitiful, not to say disgraceful, spectacle, to see managers and captains of teams appearing in print and laying claim to what they have not won. There is altogether too much of this disposition to climb half way up the ladder and then to shout to the multitude that they could go the rest of the way if they wanted to; too much of a willingness to rest on what laurels have already been won, and to exalt one team by belittling another. Where there is a championship at issue, let the teams that aspire to it get together and play for it, instead of resorting to the exploded fallacy of comparative scores to bolster up a defective title. The public does its own thinking these days, and the man who claims what does not belong to him adds nothing of value to his reputation. On the contrary, he injures himself and those whom he represents. So let the contest take place on the field, let a spirit of true sportsmanship imbue everybody