30 The Acorn the "glad hand" and congratulated them because they had won fairly and honorably and the best of feeling exists between all the high schools of the Northern League today. Now we are reluctant to believe that our friends at the Fielding Academy desired to willfully take advantage of us after having invited us to visit them; we would rather believe it was due to their ignorance of game ethics and misinterpretation of the rules. We did not object to their hall being out of proportion; we were sorry that the spectators had to form the side lines and make it necessary for the formation of new rules peculiar to that hall. We conceded all these things upon consideration without complaint. The thing that we objected to was a coach acting as an official in a game where his own team was playing. It makes no difference how honest a man may be, he can't help but let his feelings enter his decisions. He is simply blind to the actions of his own men and the short-comings of the opponent is magnified. Time and again one of our men would be pushed by an opponent and would be paralyzed for progress, whereas the other man should have received the penalty for pushing. It seemed that invariably when the ball started toward our basket a penalty was due and the play was stopped. The decisions were so partial as to cause people of their own town to make remarks. A great deal of unpleasantness and wounded feelings could have been avoided by their having had an outside official. The question might be raised, "Well, why didn't Weber's official, Fred Jensen, assert himself? Fred held himself strictly to the rules, calling only fouls which were fouls, a thing which Fielding's coach did not do. The whole thing sifts itself down to this. Either Fielding doesn't know that it is an insult to take a team up to play under disadvantages and then put their coach onto them as an official (in which case we excuse them), or they have intentionally handed us a good big lemon. The team has only good words to say in regard to the treatment they received from the students and townspeople. Christmas, 1909. 31 This is the impartial report of our games in the North, as given by the Deseret News: WEBER ACADEMY TOUR. Crack Basket Ball Team Comes to Grief at Paris, Idaho. "Friday night the Weber Academy basket-ball team showed their class by defeating the Railroad Y. M. C. A. first five at Pocatello, the final score being 57 to 19 in favor of the academy boys. The first half ended with a score of 37 to 1. On their tour in Idaho the Weber Academy boys ran into a peculiar proposition at Paris on Thanksgiving day. Despite the fact that it was generally conceded that the academy out-classed its opponents on every play, the team that tied for the championship last year was defeated. Apparently the five could not solve the style of play adopted in the Fielding hall. According to stories told by the visitors, the rules observed were distinctly weird and the spectators along the walls formed on the side lines. Such things as the players being permitted to throw the ball against the cage and then catch the ball and throw it for a basket were allowed. Then, too, there was an entire lack of backboards. Fielding's coach and maintain that practically every other point scored by Fielding was made on a foul called by their coach, while Weber made but two points officiated and the Weber team felt that they had a grievance in consequence on fouls, yet the score at the end of the first half was even." Our last year's center, Heber Hancock, has made good on the gridiron for the Aggies and is now trying out for the basket-ball team. Erving Erickson, '08, has won his sweater at the "U," and is making a fine showing in athletics there. West Linday, one of our last year's guards, has made the first team of the L. D. S.