Intercollegiates

Ted Meredith, famed middle-distance runner of a decade ago, surveyed a cinder track that stretched away, a curving, gun-metal line, from where he sat in the grandstand at Franklin Field, Philadelphia. On that track, in the course of the afternoon, he saw the runners of the University of Southern California win the 120-yd. hurdles, the 220-yd. hurdles, the discus throw, the Intercollegiate Track and Field Championship, with Princeton second, Yale third. He saw two runners--Tierney of Holy Cross, Marsters of Georgetown--each miss by just half a second his famed intercollegiate records for the quarter, for the half mile, respectively. Together with 7,000 other spectators, he was entertained, that afternoon, by one dramatic event. It occurred when Sherrill of Pennsylvania, having won the pole vault with a jump of 13 ft., set out to better the intercollegiate record of 13 ft. 1 in. set by Robert A. Gardner* in 1912./- He asked to have the bar put at 13-2, measured his takeoff, dashed down the runway, shot high in air, fell over into the pit. Ted Meredith stood up shouting. A record had fallen. But, as the crowd roared--as Sherrill, resting in the soft turf, looked up at the space over which he had leaped, the bar toppled, fell over.

* Robert A. Gardner, of Yale, was national amateur golf champion in 1909 and again in 1915.

/-The world's record is 13 ft. 9 3/4 in., made by Charles Hoff of Denmark in 1923.