Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

SCHOOL LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

C O - C U R R I C U L U M

Athletics

From its earliest days, Havergal’s approach to education was admirably progressive, and that attitude was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the value it placed on athletics. In “A long tradition of athletic achievement reaches a new level” in the Spring 2007 Torch , Christine Johnson wrote that as early as 1898 the editors of the first Ludemus raved about the newly built Main School at 354 Jarvis Street, including an enthusiastic description of board courts for tennis and basketball, which were “alive with teams running, passing, and whisking the ball into the basket, breathless.” By 1899, intramural tournaments in tennis, cricket and golf were in full swing, and fencing and ice hockey had become popular sports among students. Each season brought activities that delighted students, though no doubt there was a special excitement when the Canadian winter gave way to spring, when, as Havergal: Celebrating a Century 31 tells us, track provided an alternative to indoor gym. Hurdles were said to be “the prettiest and most graceful events,” running broad jump “the most popular,” and although no spectacular records had been established by 1903, the sport was a great success. The one disappointment was that pole vaulting was “a forbidden pleasure.” (Ping-pong, an early starter, had faded by 1903 as “the fire of enthusiasm had burned low.”) The fervour students brought to the athletic program is echoed in the poem, which appeared in the 1901 Ludemus . The title “Confession” is charmingly ironic given the pride it conveys:

“Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose—it teaches you about life.”

—BILLIE JEAN KING

“Confession” Ludemus, 1901

That pride was completely understandable because the school was developing a stellar reputation for its first-class program. In “How Havergal shaped women’s sports in Canada,” an article that appeared in the 2002 Chronicle , Sabrina Gollnow 1998 noted that Bruce Kidd, celebrated Canadian Olympic track and field athlete, also believed the school to have been in the vanguard of women’s athletics: As Bruce Kidd states in The Struggle for Canadian Sport, “Havergal College was the most athletically advanced of the Ontario schools during the early 20th century.” At a time when women were faced with restrictive stereotypes of femininity, the school was encouraging girls to do the

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