Spirit Mind Body

Wedged away in a corner of the old mill town of Springfield, Mass. is an unprepossessing college that bears the name of the community. From all outward appearances, it has little to boast about. Its campus is undistinguished, the architecture divided between turn-of-the-century brick and turn-of-the-'60s modern. Its field house was picked up secondhand from the Navy after World War II. Many high schools would consider its football stadium an embarrassment, and though its team once drew 5,000 spectators to a game, 2,000 of them had to stand. Its track team performs in the same stadium, and can't draw a yawn. Athletically, the Southern Cals, Pittsburghs, Notre Dames and Ohio States would seem to have it all over Springfield College, and their razzmatazz and press clippings so attest. Yet the truth is that no school anywhere in the country, and probably in the world, has had a more beneficial influence on sports and games than Springfield.

Springfield College specializes in physical education and youth leadership. The motto that guides its administration and 1,500 students is "Spirit, Mind, Body." It is dedicated to educating "the whole man in the service of all men," and its contributions to the wholesome life have been absolutely overwhelming. A Springfield professor, Dr. James A. Naismith, invented basketball, and a graduate, William G. Morgan, devised volleyball. In good part, the college has been responsible for the founding of the Boy Scouts of America, the Campfire Girls, PAL (the Police Athletic League) and the National Recreation Association.

For years the college has been turning out eager, clean-cut coaches, gym teachers, social workers and YMCA secretaries. "I consider Springfield College the mother school of physical education," says Dr. Thomas Cureton, professor of physical education at the University of Illinois, and Springfield '29. "It was always pointed out, even when I was a student, that a very large number of Springfield men became the principal professors of physical education in other colleges. At one time 50% of all college physical-education departments were under the direction of Springfield men."

Art Linkletter, the television entertainer, fitness enthusiast, Y booster and a member of the college's board of trustees, says, "You'll find more graduates from Springfield in Ys and physical-education programs throughout the world than from any other school. Springfield has been doing Peace Corps work for 50 years in every corner of the globe." As a matter of fact, the real Peace Corps held a training program at Springfield last summer, and when it was over, R. Sargent Shriver, the director of the corps, was so impressed with the altruism and vigor of the college staff that he all but did handsprings himself.

What makes Springfield distinctive is its spirit. From top to bottom the college is imbued with a manly, generous, hearty, old-fashioned, noble-fellow Protestantism seldom glimpsed since the days of Frank Merriwell. At Springfield it is literally not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. "The only question we ever ask of a boy," says Dr. Edward Steitz, director of athletics and head basketball coach, "is, 'Did you give 100% of yourself?' If he says yes, then he has had a tremendously successful time."

No athletic scholarships are given at Springfield, and no coach has ever been fired for losing. In the 72 years that Springfield students have been playing basketball there has rarely been a fight on the court. Indeed, the purity is such that the backfield coach of the varsity football team buys an ice cream sundae for any player who intercepts a pass. Rival schools are sometimes demoralized by Springfield's utter sportsmanship, and a favorite cry to toss at the college is, "We don't smoke, we don't chew and we won't play against girls who do." To such a taunt, Springfield students turn a deaf ear or the other cheek.

"Every time you turn the other cheek, you grow inside as well as in stature," says D. Irving Conrad, a 1962 graduate who has stayed on to teach Introduction to Camp Leadership. "I tell my class that ideals are like the stars. You'll never succeed in touching them with your hands, but if you select them as your guide and follow them, you may reach your destiny." On campus, conversation rings with such phrases as "total commitment," "dedication to service" and "gung-ho." (It is perhaps fitting that the head of physical education for the Nationalist Chinese government on Formosa is a Springfield graduate named Gunsun Hoh. But then Springfield has a way with names: the chaplain is named Parsonage.)

Historically, Springfield College is a product of the Muscular Christianity of the late 19th century. From the time of the Puritans in England, a number of Protestant churches had opposed recreation in general and sports in particular as the work of the devil. But in the 1860s two English writers, Charles Kingsley, author of Westward Ho!, and Thomas Hughes, known for Tom Brown's School Days, put forward the then radical idea that the playing field was the ideal place for building character. The concept took hold, and in 1885 the Rev. David Allen Reed, a Congregational minister in Springfield, founded the "School for Christian Workers" in his home town. His aim was to train young men for social work in churches and schools. Five years later, in 1890, the YMCA established a training program within the school, even though some Y officials opposed the move on the grounds that it would be morally incongruous to have Christian gymnasium superintendents.

Springfield was now on its way. James Naismith, a former divinity student at McGill, joined the faculty and invented basketball as a game that would innocently occupy youths on winter nights. Amos Alonzo Stagg, fresh from glory on the playing fields of Yale, spurned a lavish offer to join the New York Giants as a pitcher in order to immerse himself in the virtues of Springfield. He coached the football team, and in 1890 he and a ragamuffin collection of Springfield faculty and students almost beat a mighty Yale all-star team at Madison Square Garden in what is considered the first indoor football game ever played. For their valor, Stagg's players were dubbed "the stubby Christians." In 1891 Stagg left Springfield for the University of Chicago, which was newly backed by Rockefeller money, to pass on the lessons of manly play he had learned.

In the years that followed, the International YMCA College (it changed to its present name in 1953) had to fend off a number of attacks that it was serving up a diluted Christianity in favor of fun and games. There was an outcry among fundamentalist Christians when the school hired William G. Ballantine, dismissed from the presidency of Oberlin for his liberal theology, and there was a still vividly remembered uproar around 1916 when dancing was first allowed. The later years have been calmer. Springfield now offers dance courses in conjunction with Ted Shawn's University of the Dance, and there was no fuss at all in 1951 when the college became coeducational. Springfield has 400 coeds, and the school's morally severe founders would be pleased to know that this has caused no difficulties. At Springfield sport subdues sex. A few weeks ago, for instance, 35 Springfield boys and girls went off to the woods to a Quaker meetinghouse for a conference on integration that lasted until one in the morning. "When a late conference like this is over," says the Rev. Robert Parsonage, the chaplain, "you'd expect students to go off and neck. But they said, 'Let's have a soccer game!' And there they were, the boys and girls, out playing soccer at one in the morning."