McGill Track and Field / Cross Country
Dennis Barrett
Head Coach
 Cross-Country/Track & Field
McGill University
475 Avenue des Pins Ouest
Montreal, QC., H2W 1S4

(514) 398-7000 ext. 01646 ph.
(514) 398-4901 fax
e-mail:
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HISTORY OF TRACK & FIELD AT McGILL

For todayıs intercollegiate track athletes, the premier stage of competition has become the CIAU national championships, held at the end of every season. It is the arena in which athletes get to test where they ultimately stand among their peers. (When you consider that the CIAU championships have only been around since 1981, however, we must not let our perception become myopic!)

Track and Field at McGill University, however, has a legacy that goes back much further. It has been exactly 100 years now since McGill students formed its first intercollegiate track team in the 1899-00 school year. The group of athletes who formed that original team brought the championship banner home to McGill that season. Since then, there have been many reasons to be proud of the achievements of the runners, jumpers and throwers of the past, for they have set a splendid legacy that we strive to uphold today.

Although the McGill track team was formed a century ago, a slightly less organized form of track and field had been around at McGill for about a quarter century longer. In July of 1873, a group of McGill undergraduates won the James Gordon Bennett Challenge Cup for a two-mile race in Springfield, Mass.

The win over teams from Harvard, Amherst, Cornell, Princeton and Yale aroused so much interest on the campus back in Montreal, that McGill officials decided to organize a "Field Day". The event became an annual staple, pitting the faculties of arts, science and medicine against each other.

In 1902, the competition pitted the freshmen class against the sophomores but two decades later, by 1923, it reverted to the inter-faculty format. Eventually, the "McGill Field Day" became a sort of selection process to determine which athletes would be good candidates for McGill's intercollegiate track team. With Canadaıs growing involvement in World War II, however, the tradition ended in 1941 and was never reinstated.

The first step toward the formation of a full-fledged track team at McGill took place in 1884, with the formation of McGill University Athletic Association. This group, along with the McGill University Grounds Committee, awarded grants to athletic clubs at McGill from a special fund that was raised by a tax on all students.

With this help, the McGill track team was founded in the 1899-00 school year.

The most important meet in those days, was the annual fall battle with the University of Toronto for the intercollegiate track championships. In 1905, the meet was opened to Queenıs University, and by 1935, all CIAU teams became eligible.

The "Red and White", as the McGill team was known then, became the dominant force in the sport. McGill won the championship banner 15 times in the first 22 years of the "national" championship meet < excluding the period from 1915 to 1919 when the event was cancelled due to World War I.

From the 1920s on to the early 1950s the driving force behind the team was F.M. Van Wagner. A native of New York, he was a physical education professor and coached many teams at McGill, including basketball, cross-country and track. "Van", as he was known, was at the helm of the McGill track team from 1920 to 1952.

Van Wagner was instrumental in developing the McGill track team into a powerhouse in eastern Canada, but he preferred not to exaggerate his part in the teamıs success. After his retirement, he made light of his coaching abilities, claiming that the most advanced training he ever conducted was to find out who was suited for which event and making sure that no one hurt themselves before the meet.

His greatest ability, he believed, was to concentrate the most athletes in the events that they had a good chance of winning and to limit participation in those events they were unlikely to win. As a result, McGill usually won its meets by focusing on maximizing the number of points it could get rather than winning every event.

Although he was humble about his contributions, Van Wagner did manage to introduce the notion of continuation and preparation to the training of McGill's track athletes.

Apparently, before he took over the McGill track program, the athletes showed little interest in training in the off-season. In addition, when they actually took the time to train, they were more concerned with style than speed. "The important thing was to do it right," said Van Wagner. "Even if it meant not winning."

One athlete to benefit from this new emphasis was Phil Edwards, the greatest name in the history of McGill's track team. From 1931 to 1936, Edwards dominated the CIAU track scene, excelling in the 400m, the 800m and the mile.

See also, the History of McGill Athletics

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