I suppose I played tennis on almost every public and private court in town, and I know I hiked over every golf course. For three or four winters, with a club basketball team, I ran myself ragged in the frigid amusement halls of a hundred Mormon ward houses and took icy showers and went home blown and rubber-legged late at night. With a team in the commercial league, or with the freshman squad at the university, I hit all the high school gyms, as well as the old rickety Deseret Gymnasium next door to the Utah Hotel, where cockroaches as big and dangerous as rollers skates might be stepped on behind the dark lockers. From games and parties I ran home under dark trees, imagining myself as swift and tireless as Paavo Nurmi, and the smell and taste of that cold, smoky, autumnal air and the way the arc lights blurred in rounded golden blobs at the corners is with me yet.
—Wallace Stegner, “At Home in the Fields of the Lord”1
While the Deseret Gymnasium offered urban Mormons a grand “Temple of Health” dedicated to physical fitness and well-being, the gymnasium was merely the centerpiece of a large church-sponsored athletic program designed to serve a myriad of social and spiritual ends. From Salt Lake City to Samoa, young LDS men and women participated in an array of athletic and recreational activities that maintained adolescent activity in the church and ensured that commercial amusements were not the only leisure-time activities available.
The onus of putting LDS recreational philosophies into practice fell largely on the church’s youth auxiliary organizations—the Young Men’s and Young Ladies’ (later Young Women’s) Mutual Improvement Associations (YMMIA and YLMIA). In [158] organizing the young women’s group in 1869, Brigham Young instructed: “There is need for the young daughters of Israel to get a living testimony of the truth. Young men obtain this while on missions, but this way is not opened to the girls. More testimonies are obtained on the feet than on the knees. I wish our girls to obtain a knowledge of the Gospel for themselves. For this purpose I desire to establish this organization and want my family to lead out in the great work.” The cultivation of spiritual gifts and the creation of “testimon[ies] of the truth” likewise played a central role in the creation of the young men’s auxiliary in 1875. In that year, Young charged young men and their leaders to “let the key-note of your work be the establishment in the youth of individual testimony of the truth and magnitude of the great latter-day work; the development of the gifts within them that have been bestowed upon them by the laying on of hands of the servants of God; cultivating a knowledge and an application of the eternal principles of the great science of life.”2 Though testimony-building lay at the heart of the youth organizations, the major focus of the groups, as Brigham Young had advised, quickly became activities that kept adolescent feet busy. While spiritual awakening may have remained the auxiliary’s ultimate goal, physical activities comprised the bulk of day-to-day programs. Where the previous generation [159] found salvation on their knees by learning to pray, young Mormons in the early twentieth century were taught to find God on their feet by learning to play.
As recreational activities moved to the central stage of Mormon adolescent social life, it remained unclear which auxiliary was to provide leadership. Previously, each auxiliary (Sunday School, Relief Society, priesthood quorums, children’s Primary, etc.) had organized parties, get-togethers, and excursions for its members. Because the church had no overall organizing plan for recreation before the early 1900s, each group was left mostly on its own to devise social activities. Though each auxiliary continued to coordinate social and recreational activities, by the dawn of the twentieth century the burden of promoting church-sponsored activities had fallen to the youth organizations. In part, this was due to the fact that adolescents were more likely to have both the time and the inclination to support recreation. Likewise, church leaders recognized that young persons needed special attention if they were to remain allied with the church. As early as 1903, the YMMIA and YLMIA began to formulate guidelines for directing proper “amusements and entertainments.” As a bedrock principle guiding LDS recreation, the general board of the YMMIA declared that Latter-day Saints had recognized the need for amusements “from the beginning.” More importantly for the youth auxiliary, however, the general board argued that in LDS circles “the older people fully recognize the fact that amusements are necessary for the young folks” and that “recreation and rest are not useless; nor a necessary evil.” Amusements for young people, then, were “not a luxury but a positive necessity, and the efforts of our officers [160] should be not to suppress, but to control them.” As part of the effort to control amusements, the board called for the organization of local committees to regulate the recreational offerings of wards and stakes. In keeping with the fluid nature of recreational management, the bishop (or stake president) would supervise a committee composed of at least one representative from each auxiliary organization. This committee, in turn, would make sure that all local activities adhered to the standards established by the general boards.3
In regulating amusements on the local level, the board furnished guidelines for the local committees to follow. Most importantly, all amusements were to be educational—not necessarily boring or of a serious nature but “of a high class.” In fact, the board confessed, “merriment and wit are not only allowable but advisable.” The general board recommended literary entertainments but advised local leaders to “avoid all objectionable methods of dancing, late hours, and card-playing.” Dancing, amateur theatricals, picnics, concerts, and home socials qualified while “brain-taxing games” were not encouraged in areas where young people worked “in occupations requiring the exercise of the brain more than the muscles.” Late hours were to be avoided everywhere, but especially in country districts where late night travel was likely to prove both physically and morally injurious. Other forms of amusement—billiards, commercial dance halls, and late night buggy riding—received similar discouragement. [161] Although complete leadership of LDS recreation programs had yet to be assigned to the YMMIA and YLMIA, their leadership on issues concerning the recreation of adolescents was already evident just after the turn of the twentieth century.4
Writing a year after the formation of the stake and ward committees on amusements and entertainments, YMMIA board member Willard Done argued that the organization had drifted away from its original calling that included both the “development of religious faith” and the “development of proper social intercourse and recreation” to a focus narrowly confined to theological issues alone. Theology, Done concluded, was just one plank in the MIA’s program. If the organizations were to keep young people within the church, a renewed emphasis on debate, music, science, and history was required. Therefore, the YMMIA “desire[d] to depart from this exclusive work, and make our work a little more general, and begin again to occupy the field we practically abandoned a few years ago, viz., the field of general culture and social enjoyment.”5
Although the official assignment of recreational leadership did not come to the MIAs until the 1920s, many ward MIAs unilaterally designated themselves as the organizations best prepared to provide leisure-time leadership. In 1909, the general board of the YMMIA passed a resolution calculated not only to secure control of [162] church recreation but also to ensure the future viability of the organization. “Owing to the fact that the priesthood quorums have formally taken up the study of theology,” YMMIA leaders resolved to “take up educational, literary, and recreative studies, permeated by religious thought. That music and art be encouraged, and that social culture and refinement of manners constitute an important part of our endeavor.” The resolution called for manuals to be written along these lines and concluded that “athletic work be encouraged and established wherever practicable.”6 These were not wholly new ideas in a church that had long stressed the positive nature of wholesome recreation; however, by staking claim to recreational leadership, the YMMIA created a new niche for itself in the church’s organizational scheme. Now that the priesthood quorums were taking control of theological instruction, the MIAs needed a raison d’être. Recreational leadership gave the MIAs a reason to exist. Over the next two decades, the organizations honed their approach toward recreation and ensured that the youth auxiliaries would continue to play an integral role with the church—in the highest levels and well as in local areas.
From nearly all quarters, great results were expected from the leisure-time leadership of the MIA. Perhaps the most wide-ranging expectations for the MIA’s role in recreation came from Apostle Heber J. Grant. Describing the “Place of the Y.M.M.I.A. in the Church,” Apostle Grant joined Willard Done’s call for an inclusive [163] MIA program based on more than theology. The youth organizations, Grant wrote, “give opportunity for study along religious, social, scientific, intellectual and physical lines.” Just as importantly, the Apostle echoed Done and argued that church youth activities kept young Mormons within the fold and away from social clubs and select educational societies. Church influence and direction were needed in all areas, particularly recreation. “If we fail to provide our young men with the opportunity of [wholesome church recreation],” Elder Grant warned, “they will go outside of Church influences to indulge in these things.” Later in his address, Grant described not only the variety of church recreational options but also why they were so important:
Do away with out associations and you reduce the young ladies’ opportunities to capture good husbands. As a social center in which public and private amusements may be carried on, and proper conduct inculcated and made popular, our organizations are useful and beneficial. Here the young may engage in musical, dramatic, and other like entertainments and festivities. Scouting, field sports, athletic tournaments, excursions, dances, and other social gatherings are here encouraged, giving the young people an opening under proper tutelage and supervision for their pent-up energy that might otherwise display itself in wrong actions. . . . The [recreation] field, if not occupied by this Church organization, will be occupied by private companies and associations, not always desirable and clean, but formed for money-making. How many crimes are committed for money! We want these amusements, not for the dollars, but for the uplifting and the betterment of the youth of Israel.7
No single statement better captures the expectations for and the philosophy behind the MIA’s recreation program in the Progressive era and beyond. Providing an appropriate gathering place for sexual commingling, teaching proper conduct, developing personal [164] talents, and keeping young Mormons away from the perverting influences of commercial recreation comprised the hopes and the action plan energizing the youth-directed recreation programs. These ideals found poetic expression in Jane McJackson’s poem, “The M.I.A.” (1921):
Strong’s our organization of the M.I.A.;
It stand for our improvement all along the way.
It gives us high ideals, helps us reach our aim;
It keeps us up and doing in a worth-while game.
For we’ve no time for loafing, or for idle play,
If we are earnest workers in the M.I.A.8
The charge for earnest MIA workers certainly included high ideals and many worthwhile games while striving for personal improvement and keeping youngsters off the streets.
While most church leaders supported the recreational thrust of the MIA organizations, a handful of prominent Mormons questioned whether recreational programs were best suited to teach their youth the spiritual and physical skills needed to survive. In September 1911, Salt Lake physician Dr. Charles L. Olsen penned a letter to the editor of the Improvement Era offering an alternative to the recreation-based youth programs. “If but a fraction of the time, talent, and energy now spent in exploiting amusement for our young people were utilized in devising means of useful employment for this same class of individuals,” Dr. Olsen wrote, “I do not hesitate to assert that we should have better, nobler, more useful and positively more valuable young people than at present. As it is we rear a lot of assuming, expectant, demanding, [165] dependent leaners. Where are the lifters among our young people? There are some, but they are very few” [emphasis in original].9 Unlike most LDS recreation theorists, Olsen complained that structured leisure-time activities were turning out lazy, sniveling “leaners”—not the hardy “lifters” who would lead society down the proper paths. Play had little currency in Dr. Olsen’s scheme; rather “useful employment” provided the answer.
Recreation’s ability to develop spiritual skills was similarly assailed by Edward P. Kimball, a member of the church’s music committee. Though Kimball believed that religious ideals should be applied in practical ways, including amusement and recreation, he reminded church members “to see to it that [recreation and amusement programs] fulfill constantly its highest service, and does not become perverted to such an extent that real improvement and culture can not follow in its wake.” In seeking to preserve a fine balance between spiritual and intellectual life, Kimball feared that youth recreational activities were overstepping their bounds; in effect, recreational means had become an end unto themselves. Speaking particularly of the field of recreation, Kimball argued that since recreation “touches more easily the profaner things in our nature, there is danger of some things connected with it, which originally were intended to be merely incidental to the program, becoming from choice and practice the principal features in the program—not of course, in the minds of the officers, but in the conception of the work by the membership.” Perhaps Kimball was just protecting his [166] turf as a member of the music committee, or as an intellectual he may have carried a bias against physical forms of recreation. Whatever the reasons, his message was clear—too much recreation shifted the focus of young church members away from the higher pursuits that led to “real improvement and culture.”10 Kimball was not alone in his concern over a misplaced emphasis on youth recreation. In 1915, the editors of the Improvement Era related the story of a general board member who was invited to speak to a local association. In preparing his address, he was informed that any topic was acceptable except for “religion and vocations.” Incensed, the editors shot back a sharp reminder to local MIAs: “It must be remembered that the main purpose of our organization is to impress the membership with a testimony of the gospel, and its restoration in the latter days through the Prophet Joseph Smith.” With that foundation securely in place, the editors turned their attention to secondary issues in the youth groups: “All other work and activities and studies that we engage in are merely means to this great end. How, then, can the membership of an association justify themselves in asking merely for entertainment? And how can they consistently request that a speaker shall not discuss religion before them?”11 Religion was the end goal of the organization and recreation was merely one means. An overreliance on leisure-time activities, according to the editors [167] and others, was not merely an oversight but a repudiation of the basic tenets of the youth organizations.
Calls for reining in the church’s recreational activities remained in the minority for most of the early twentieth century, however. In most cases, both on the general church level and in local areas, ward-sponsored recreation programs quickly became the heart of social life among adolescent Mormons. Ward leaders focused their efforts on providing wholesome and proper recreational outlets for their young members and hoped that activities at the meetinghouse would lead to lifelong activity in the church.
Not to Make Records, But to Make Men
Without question, the linchpin for the church recreation program was the organization of a variety of athletic events—both competitive and cooperative. By 1909 when the MIA Generl Board resolved that “athletic work be encouraged and established wherever practicable” athletic activities had already become a major aspect of local MIA efforts.12 Mormons had always had a purpose underlying their play efforts and the movement toward establishing athletics within the church was founded on what MIA leaders considered to be firm philosophical and theological ground.
In employing athletics as an arena for social and moral instruction, Mormon leaders placed themselves in the mainstream of progressive social thought in twentieth-century America. Progressive playground theorists, according to historian Dominick [168] Cavallo, linked “muscular coordination and ‘efficiency’ acquired through careful physical conditioning to moral development and control. In fact, they argued that it was possible to determine both the content and strength of the child’s moral faculty by means of prescribed, and repetitive, physical drills.” Though LDS thinkers never made explicit the connection between strength and spirituality, most LDS writings on the subject accepted some correlation between flabby muscles and flabby morals. Mormon leaders were more likely to echo the accepted sociological dictum that sports, and particularly team sports, developed a social sense among participants. Striving for a common goal (in the case of some sports, quite literally), players fostered a sense of community where team success outweighed individual accomplishment. As Cavallo writes of the ideas of respected play theorist James Mark Baldwin, “The primary value of team games . . . was their role in teaching the child that he must conform to the values and aspirations of his social group. . . . For instance, baseball engendered a ‘spirit of union’ among the players, a desire for each to be like all. If the youngster wanted to be accepted as a valued member of the team, he had to acquire ‘the habit of suspension of private utilities for the larger social good.’ In sports, society’s values, mores, and techniques of social competence were ‘projected’ into the child. The individual learned that his abilities and desires were meaningless outside the context of communal approval.”13 Like progressive theorists who primarily concentrated their efforts on [169] “Americanizing” immigrant children in urban areas, Mormon leaders sought to socialize youngsters through sports. LDS leaders merely changed the primary social group from country to church. The same principles applied whether reformers wanted young persons to assimilate into a national community or into a religious group.
Team sports played a central role for progressive playground planners and for Mormon play organizers. In fact, the same theories energized both efforts. Describing the philosophy that led play leaders toward team competition, Cavallo writes: “The team as ‘one great community’ shaped and legitimized the player’s behavior and values. It also placed specific limits upon his right to behave in a ‘competitive’ or ‘individualistic’ manner. The rhythmic, synchronized movement of a basketball team as it roamed up and down the court forced players to see, feel, think, and act as a unit rather than as individuals. . . . Because the team experience forged social unity out of individuals from diverse ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds, play organizers viewed it as an antidote to the alienation, violence, and loneliness seemingly inherent in urban society.” The team aspect of games likewise promoted a “corporate conscience” in individuals who realized that membership in a larger social group or organization synergistically affected personal worth. As part of a team, youngsters learned that community responsibility outweighed individual needs. The lesson was, in the words of current basketball coach Pat Riley, “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team.’” Individuality was transcended through the team experience; personal identity became a function of membership in a social group. Cavallo characterizes the lessons that progressives found [170] in team play: “The player should obey the rules, but he must also be loyal to teammates, willingly sacrifice personal glory to the common cause, graciously accept defeat, perceive victory as a group rather than an individual achievement, and obey the team captain. . . . The team experience was an attempt to create an equilibrium, a creative balance, between individuality and group direction.”14
At times, Mormon athletic philosophy seemed to comport itself almost perfectly with certain strands of progressive playground thought. Though written slightly after the heyday of most playground theorists, the Handbook of the YLMIA and YMMIA, published in 1931, teaches two of the central concepts of progressive thought—the correspondence between muscles and morals and the socialization potential of team sports. According to the handbook, “at no time has there been such a need for clean athletics as there is in America today.” Urban children, especially boys, were growing “pretty soft” from a constant diet of commercial entertainment, riding in “fine automobiles,” and eating rich food. In becoming citified, urban boys had missed on the rugged experiences from which the “early American pioneers derived so much good in the moulding of their characters.” With little hope of future frontiers to tame, Mormon leaders turned to athletics as a form of vicarious pioneering. Because hard work was no longer the path to hard muscles, hard play would have to suffice. By participating in athletics, a young man would learn both physical and moral lessons. [171] Though the wording is somewhat ambiguous, it is easy to see the moral underpinnings that formed the philosophical foundation of the athletic program. The lessons appeared everywhere to athletic enthusiasts. “First the boy is taught that to sweat is not vulgar and that a young body will function better if the blood is forced to circulate a little faster occasionally. He is taught to take care of his body,” the manual advises. Remembering that the dietary Word of Wisdom contains both physical and a moral components, the handbook made explicit the link between team sports and moral behavior: “If he is to compete on an athletic team there are some things he cannot do. He is taught to say ‘no’ to excesses in eating. He knows he cannot smoke, and that he cannot drink. He knows he cannot stay out late at night, and that his body will not function at its best if he abuses it. The self-denial, which is one of the greatest developers of character, is very good for him.” For the individual player, the development of muscular strength and moral fortitude seemed to go hand in glove, or perhaps hand in mitt. Furthermore, participation in team sports, especially under the watchful eye of a moral coach, taught social skills in a powerful way. Again, in reference to the sporting young man, the manual states:
His athletic coach can exact more self-denial from him than can his own parents. He is taught there are rules in the game. Again there are things he can do and things he cannot do. This respect for law, if early inculcated in the lives of our young boys, would do much toward the remedy for the neglect of law that is now prevalent in America. He is taught to be loyal to himself, and loyal to his team, and loyal to his school, and loyal to his Church. This will carry over into his life and inspire loyalty to his home, his wife, his family and his country. He is taught never to quit. To be called ‘yellow’ is the worst name one can call an [172] athlete. This test of character he will carry on into the battle of life. He is taught ‘team play’ or cooperation—a wonderful trait to develop.15
This statement represents the progressive playground code translated to fit the Mormon experience. Team sports not only had the power to “Americanize,” they also carried the potential to “Mormonize” urban adolescents.
It would be nearly impossible—and well beyond the scope or intent of this investigation—to catalog the variety of sporting events sponsored on the ward, stake, and general levels of the LDS church. Tens of thousands of basketball games, thousands of baseball games, hundreds of track and field meets, and countless field days could be accounted for by naming the victorious squads or recounting final scores. It is more important to examine closely why church leaders turned to athletics and the expected impact of competitive athletics in the lives of young church members.
In athletics, church play leaders found a plastic social device which could be molded to address an assortment of problems within the church and in Mormon society. Not only would athletic involvement spur male adolescent activity within the church and adherence to church principles, but participation in sports filled a need for physical training among the young as well. By modeling a sense a order, team sports helped young men to cope with the vicissitudes of urban life. Furthermore, church leaders noted that athletics provided a painless entrée for proselyting missionaries [173] throughout the world. More than anything else, however, church leaders hoped that athletic participation in a wholesome atmosphere would help shepherd the adolescent male along the path toward moral maturity.
Detecting an adolescent crisis period as a boy became a man, YMMIA General Board member Lyman R. Martineau preached about the social and moral potential found in athletics. In an October 1912 Improvement Era article, Martineau wasted little time addressing the needs of young men: “Some say they do not need athletics. It seems to me that all young men need them. Where is there a ward without the idler, the ‘kicker,’ the tempter, who especially need them? There is a crisis in the adolescent period of every boy.” As Martineau saw things, a major component of the adolescent crisis was biological—sexual stirrings that once lay deep beneath the surface were beginning to bubble over. Social problems only added to the explosive biological mix. “The change from boy to man is a physical change,” Martineau asserted, “New ideas come to him, and he obtains a broader view of things, and a thrill of conscious power and self-reliance stirs the blood that hitherto has readily yielded to parental rule. The anxious parent needs help under these conditions. There is need to give direction to the hot blood and enthusiasm of youth, rather than to allow it to be wasted in the mania for speed, or lost in the stagnant stupidity that comes from idleness and bad company.” Besieged by both sex drive and social stresses, young men needed all the help they could get. Athletics offered the answer. Martineau continued, “The boy needs constructive discipline, and he needs someone to associate with, who has a purpose in life and who, [174] understanding the boy-spirit, may teach him that organized play is better than destructive deviltry or stupid idleness.” Athletics, then, provided the means to inculcate proper social behavior and high morals. In Martineau’s words, “Athletics in the M.I.A. has a higher purpose than mere recreation. Our track meets are not primarily to make records, but are a part in the program to make men. The mission of the Mutual Improvement Associations is to save and develop our boys and young men, and an important element in their development is giving them such physical, mental, and moral vigor as shall place them in the highest standards of efficiency.”16 The goal in this athletic program was not winning gold medals, but teaching youngsters to live the golden rule. By creating a structure to contain the “hot blood” of youth, church athletics put the lid on simmering sexuality and changed misdirected boys into moral men.
To create an organizational structure that used sports to direct LDS young men, the YMMIA organization in the urban Ensign Stake began serious gymnasium work in 1908. Under the careful supervision of E. J. Milne, a member of the stake board and the physical director of LDS University, and stake board member Dr. E. G. Gowans, boys gathered at the LDSU gymnasium twice a month for a theological lesson and an hour of physical sports including basketball and running races. On one occasion the president of the church, Joseph F. Smith, and many members of the general board watched 127 young [175] men go through their paces and were “delighted with the exercises.” MIA-sponsored athletic programs had received validation from the highest echelons of church leadership. As the Improvement Era recorded, “In our large cities, physical training in connection with the Mutuals is a crying need, and doubtless more will soon be said and done in this matter.”17 Providing physical training for the young men was considered so valuable (particularly in keeping youth from “downtown places”) that exercise was permitted to infringe on the time normally devoted to theological training. “Even if the regular lessons should be curtailed by these exercises,” the Improvement Era directed, “it is believed that no harm will result, for many of the boys and young men are doing fairly good work in the quorums of the priesthood, where they are taught theological subjects, and their religious duties.”18 Physical exercise programs were never intended to replace theological training of young men in the church but by 1908, the emphasis of the YMMIA was beginning to tilt toward athletics as the most valuable aspect of the youth organization.
Church-sponsored athletic programs meant that boys were not only improving their physical stamina, but they were also playing under the direct supervision of church officials. In other words, by getting a boy to participate in LDS sports, leaders ensured that at least he was spending some time at the church. Not only did this keep [176] young men from the vagaries of street life, but it also created a positive church-related experience for many. At the annual MIA conference in 1910, Lyman Martineau promised that “if our organizations would take up athletics and make it one of the prominent features of their work, and invite the boys that were inclined to be wayward, that in due course of time these very boys would become enrolled members in the organizations.” Striking two of the major chords accompanying athletic work among LDS youth, Martineau concluded, “Athletics, carried on in a proper manner, will do much to increase our attendance and bring about a general moral uplift.”19 Other YMMIA leaders, like general board member and Deseret Gym architect Lewis Telle Cannon reiterated the attraction that athletics offered to boys who might otherwise avoid the meetinghouse. “Already some of the stakes have demonstrated the power of [athletics] properly managed to increase the interest and attendance at Mutual meetings,” Cannon related. “There is chance here for all possible diversity. Get organized for it and try it out and you will recognize its value in adding interest to your work and in enabling you to reach some who might be otherwise unapproachable.”20
Success did seem to follow athletic endeavors in the church. For increasing attendance at meetings and promoting adherence to church principles (primarily the Word of Wisdom), athletics was hailed as a motivating factor for many young men. As [177] early as 1902, the organization of an athletic club had helped the Colonia Juarez (Mexico) Ward “suppress blasphemy” among the young men. As sponsor of an athletic club, the ward enacted a resolution that profanity would not be allowed among club members; an offending member was subject to expulsion. Their efforts found success as young men who were “addicted to small swearing, quit, and assisted in the labor of suppressing the evil.”21 In Duchesne (Utah), YMMIA superintendent Edwin L. Murphy reported that the formation of an MIA basketball league “proved of great interest in bringing the boys to the Mutual and in doing away with tobacco.” For the following summer, the Duchesne Stake planned to arrange inter-ward athletic contests to maintain the momentum created by the interest in winter sports.22 Stake Board Athletic Director E. W. Watkins reported that the participants in the Box Elder program learned impressive sports skills and stayed out of trouble. “The type of baseball played by these young men was equal in many cases to some of the professional games,” Watkins claimed. “It has the tendency to encourage parents to take greater interest in their young sons and assist materially in solving some of the social problems of the day.”23 Box Elder’s investment in physical programs had paid immeasurable dividends: athletic [178] excellence, family unity, and social peace. No sociological study was needed to convince Watkins of the impact of MIA sports on his local community. In Salt Lake City, it was reported that Sabbath attendance at pleasure resorts had dropped primarily because athletics and other activities kept young men “so occupied, so interested, so wrought up with the splendid things they have to do” that they soon learned that “they will have greater joy in performing this work than in seeking pleasure in an illegitimate way.”24 As these cases indicate—at least in anecdotal form—the athletic programs of the LDS church often lived up to the high expectations that both progressive and Mormon theorists had assumed.
Though far from the recreational philosophies of progressive playground theorists, Mormon leaders quickly learned that athletic participation by LDS proselyting missionaries often made inroads with non-members that would have otherwise been impossible. This tactic remained largely unspoken in philosophical terms but was widely advertised by reports in the Improvement Era. Readers of the magazine could not avoid the message that sports and proselyting created a potent combination. The first account linking missionaries to sports came from Japan where, in 1911, American missionaries working in Tokyo joined the “Tokyo-American Baseball Team.” Composed of about thirty expatriate Americans, the team played once a week against Japanese student or club teams and other American teams, including a group of [179] sailors visiting Yokohama. An eighteen-game season allowed the missionaries to rub shoulders with teammates from throughout the United States and Canada. Most importantly, as Elbert D. Thomas, president of the Japanese Mission, reported, the eclectic group crossed denominational lines. “For instance,” wrote Thomas, “there were a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Quaker, a Methodist, and a ‘Mormon’ missionary; a United States army officer, an attache of the American embassy, a secretary of the American embassy, and an American electrical engineer.” Thomas concluded that “all were the best of fellows.” The accompanying pictures showed Reverend E. C. Lloyd, missionary-teacher of the American Episcopal Church and captain of the 1911 squad, standing with Elder H. Grant Ivins, LDS missionary and captain of the 1912 team. No baptisms were reported by President Thomas, but the feelings of goodwill proved the proselyting potential of “a phase of missionary experience that [was] a little out of the ordinary.”25 The novelty of the American national pastime likewise brought attention to missionaries working in Samoa. On New Year’s Day in 1924, a missionary team played a game against a team of experienced baseball players from American and British Samoa. Though the missionaries won the game (they had lost to the same team several days earlier), the more important victory was an increase in camaraderie toward the Mormon elders. According to Melvin G. Wagstaff, secretary of the Samoan mission, “Our games were marked by good sportsmanship and clean [180] playing, and they have been the means of disposing of much of that lack of understanding which formerly existed between us and our good neighbors. We hope that this play may be the means of more friendly relations and better understanding between us ‘Mormon’ missionaries and the local people in charge here.”26 Whether in Utah or far-off Samoa, Mormons in the early twentieth century were playing with a purpose. Using athletics as a tool to break down barriers between themselves and non-Mormons, missionaries believed they were truly at play in the fields of the Lord.
Although athletics was a main plank in the church’s effort to keep young men within the fold, leaders cautioned against an overweening emphasis on athletics. The degree of involvement in athletic activities was determined by the interest level in local areas. Lyman R. Martineau lectured to stake YMMIA superintendents, “It is not our desire to force scout work nor any form of athletics upon any ward or stake, but we are ready and anxious to aid in organizing when and where a local demand for it is manifested. It is our aim and desire that the Y.M.M.I.A. shall organize, direct and control these activities along wholesome and uplifting lines as fast as wards and stakes can get ready.”27 The infrastructure to organize athletic programs had been created and was ready to implement; it was up to local units, however, to pick up the ball and run [181] with it. And it did not take long for many wards and stakes to rush headlong into athletics.
Field Days
Annual track meets or “field days” when members from wards or stakes would compete against each other in a variety of athletic and oratorical events were among the earliest manifestations of the church’s athletic program. Though the general MIA did not hold its first official “field day” until 1911, sports and games had become a major attraction of the annual MIA conference several years earlier. In 1906, for example, one afternoon and evening of the eleventh annual MIA conference was completely dedicated to sports and “field day exercises” at Calder’s Park in Salt Lake City. After attending theological and spiritual meetings earlier in the day, MIA workers watched a baseball game between the Box Elder and Weber stakes, which lasted 12 innings and ended in a 4-4 deadlock. Foot races and basketball offered competitive outlets for others, while some joined boating excursions or played on the park’s amusements—all free of charge to MIA visitors. An informal reception and an evening of dancing rounded out the day’s events. More than 3000 free tickets had been distributed to MIA officers and workers for the event.28 By 1911, the number of entries in the field day portion of [182] MIA conference had grown so large that two theological training sessions were rescheduled so that an entire day could be devoted to the MIA athletic meet at Wandamere Park.29
The annual MIA field days were designed not only to showcase sporting skills but also to instill sportsmanship. At the 1912 convention—where a baseball team from Box Elder Stake not only beat a select team from Salt Lake but also “came in for many compliments on their nobby suits”—the example of high-minded sportsmanship and clean play received noticed from Lyman R. Martineau in the Improvement Era. Regarding the athletic contests held at the June conference, Martineau congratulated all participants: “The proper athletic spirit led several of the contesting stakes to enter the meet with less expectation to win than for the effort to secure clean, fair sport and training for sports’ sake; after all, ‘it is more important to play than to win.’ While to win is of course desirable, it is not paramount.” By extolling the virtues of clean play at the conference, Martineau set a high standard for all church athletes. The message could not have been more clear—winning was not everything, participation counted most. To paraphrase Shakespeare, play was the thing. Although such platitudes were perhaps well-intentioned, it was soon apparent that not all athletes possessed similar skills or aptitudes. Although participation may have been the primary virtue, winning, as Martineau wrote, was nevertheless desirable. Surely, we can imagine some [183] competitors grumbling that lop-sided contests were neither fair nor fun. Because sports were supposed to produce social cohesion, modifications to the program became necessary to equalize the skill level of competitors. Therefore, MIA leaders created skill- and age-level classifications to ensure that athletes not only had an opportunity to compete but to win as well. “It is the intention to develop in the Y.M.M.I.A. the best talent in the Church, in athletic efficiency, regardless of whether college or high school athletes enter or not,” Martineau explained. “There is much interest in these wholesome sports, among those who do not attend college or who have left school. At the next annual meet is the intention to classify events so as to provide fair contests for middle aged men as well as for the better college men who might be regarded as in the semi-professional class. This will give the meet a much wider scope and invite more numerous participants in wards and stakes, resulting in bringing together at the June meet the very best men in our organization.”30 In calling for “athletic efficiency,” Martineau understood that participation in sports not only taught athletic skill and grace but moreover fostered group socialization through cooperative teamwork. Martineau’s efficient athletes were not only good sports, but good citizens and church members. The athletic leader had surely remembered his own advice that church athletics were not instituted to make records, but to make men. [184]
While sporting events and other competitions began to dominate the general MIA program in the second decade of the century, athletic programs in wards and stakes experienced a similar rise in prominence. Judging from the reports that local units periodically provided to the Improvement Era, sports programs—especially competitions between wards and stakes—were the hub around which YMMIA programs revolved. Believing that athletic participation could teach moral and physical lessons, and knowing that competitions motivated many boys toward church activity, local MIA groups turned to athletics with unparalleled enthusiasm. The importance of regular athletic participation as a form of wholesome recreation was captured in a resolution passed by the Preston (Idaho) YMMIA:
Whereas, every young man needs some wholesome recreation, which he cannot obtain unless means are provided, and
Whereas, the time so devoted should be made interesting and profitable, and
Whereas, Athletic sports cannot be successfully promoted unless a uniform time is devoted to them, be it resolved that,
As stake and ward officers we earnestly urge the setting aside of Saturday afternoon throughout the stake for this purpose, and pledge ourselves to work to this end in our respective wards. It being understood that this resolution does not apply where young men or young ladies are engaged during the week in school work where the needed recreation is obtained.31 [185]
The time had come to regularize athletic work within the church. Weekly, seasonal, and annual events quickly came to dominate MIA calendars throughout the church.
Reports flowed into Salt Lake City from wards and stakes holding regular athletic meets throughout the church. The Millard (Utah) Stake YMMIA and YLMIA hosted a stake track meet at Holden, Utah, during April 1910. For three days, more than one hundred contestants from eight wards (out of eleven in the stake ) competed in athletic events and oratory competitions. Though details are scarce, the young women of the stake competed in a basketball tournament in which the women of the Oasis Ward won top prize.32 The following year, Millard’s MIA day included oratorical contests, music, story-telling, basketball, track and field events, debate, and a grand ball. Of that event, one participant wrote, “some fifteen hundred people from different parts of the stake attended the gathering, and it was pronounced one of the most entertaining and instructive social and literary affairs and athletic meets ever held” in that stake.33 The experiences in Millard seemed to validate athletics as the main source of both entertainment and instruction in the church. A little farther north in American Fork, the Alpine Stake sponsored their second annual MIA athletic contest in June 1910. As reported by stake secretary John E. Standing, a “large and enthusiastic crowd was [186] present, every ward being represented, which speaks volumes for the interest taken in, and the popularity of, the meet.” For those less interested in athletics, the Lehi Silver Band provided entertainment beyond the sporting spectacle.34 In Salt Lake City, four urban stakes created the YMMIA Athletic League which oversaw competitions in running, jumping, and basketball. In the first year of the annual competition held at the Deseret Gym, the Salt Lake Stake won the “silver loving cup” known as the Daynes Trophy (Daynes Jewelry Company had donated the prize).35 Other stakes used athletic competitions not only to reward victors, but to earn money as well. North Weber Stake, for example, held a field day to raise funds to offset the travel expenses of stake officers visiting the far-flung wards. Various races, high jumps, pole vaults, ball games, and boxing contests were augmented by a dance, picture shows, and refreshments for sale.36 It did not take long for stakes and wards along the Wasatch mountains and throughout the intermountain west to utilize athletic meets to entertain young and old alike as well as instruct participants and spectators in the latent lessons of competition—namely, teamwork and cooperation. Along the way, other needs—like raising funds—could be met by the widespread popularity of stake and ward field days. [187]
While track and field events drew thousands of participants and spectators on an annual basis, unquestionably the most popular sport among progressive-era Mormon adolescents was basketball. The push to build and equip church gymnasiums stemmed largely from the desire to make basketball available for young men and women. Introduced to LDS youth soon after its invention in 1891, basketball provided adolescents with the opportunity for physical exercise, while the team aspect of the game provided for socialization opportunities. As early as 1903, the Improvement Era noted that an LDS basketball team had defeated a team from Colorado.37 Though obviously some LDS units had been sponsoring basketball earlier, perhaps the initial organization of a competitive league occurred in Salt Lake’s Ensign Stake in 1908, the same year that the stake initiated gymnasium work. Played in annex halls located near meetinghouses (the Deseret Gymnasium would not be built until 1910), wards battled it out for hoop supremacy in front of audiences often containing several hundred spectators. In several of the Ensign Stake’s wards, the sport was popular enough that two teams were created; in essence, wards organized a “varsity” team containing the premiere players and a “junior varsity” (or “second” team) squad made up of less talented players. In both categories, teams from the Twentieth Ward were recognized as the champions.38 [188]
Although team-oriented sports had been hailed as a progressive method to socialize urban populations, the popularity of LDS basketball quickly extended beyond the city limits. In rural areas, where distant neighbors and difficult travel made regular visits difficult, basketball games proved reason enough for far-off Saints to gather. When travel required overnight stays, the game itself became merely one activity in a day full of socializing. One particular contest—pitting the young men from Almo and Malta against Grouse Creek—details the commitment to basketball and fellowship which energized LDS congregations early in the twentieth century. In March 1923, the young men from Almo and Malta began a journey across snowy mountain passes under circumstances “calculated to test the genuine sport spirit, and make character.” At 8:30 a.m. on 14 March, the boys and their leaders left town in a blizzard and hiked toward the mountains which divided the competing wards. Arriving at the foot of the mountains near the home of Bishop Ernest Simpers, the bishop’s wife insisted that the group have dinner with her family. Tired and hungry, the traveling party “readily abided by her counsel.” After the meal, the bishop loaded his bob sleigh and the group continued their journey under the power of the four horses in the lead. When the horses gave out halfway up the summit, the boys and leaders marched in single file along the ridge following each other’s footsteps as best they could. Upon reaching the other side of the mountain, they met Bishop W. F. Richens of Grouse Creek with a four-horse bob sleigh. “How we did appreciate rolling into that sleigh, tired and leg [189] weary!” wrote one of the adult leaders. The visiting team received dinner at the Grouse Creek chapel immediately preceding the game.39
The game itself—played in the basement amusement hall of the Grouse Creek chapel—presented the visiting team with a distinct handicap. Although the hall was equipped with electric lights, the hoops were only two feet from the ceiling. In the words of Superintendent J. Henry Thompson, the visitors “had a poor show for scoring” while the Grouse Creek team was “used to the peculiar situation of the baskets” and found scoring much easier. Quite a home-court advantage! After losing both games, the good-natured visitors promised the Grouse Creek boys a “hot contest” when they played the return games on the Malta side of the mountain.40 Traveling during four days of storm and sunshine, socializing with other LDS members, and playing competitive sports transformed such trips from athletic contests to sites of socialization. Sports provided the excuse; socialization was the result. Along the mountains of Malta and in the gymnasium at Grouse Creek, Mormons were made.
Basketball—and the use of recreation facilities—often provoked “hot contests” of a different variety among members of the same ward. In Salt Lake Stake’s Fifteenth Ward, for example, a number of inter-organizational disputes erupted when the M-Men (auxiliary for males aged 17 to 23) expressed the desire to take up basketball seriously. [190] The minutes of the Ward Recreation Committee for 25 November 1925 record that the “M men signify intention of attending M.I.A. and participating in Stake contests in basketball, etc., and request regular nights for practice if possible, also that said basketball be in their possession and control during the MIA season.” In this case, though the details are unclear, it appears that scarce resources (only one amusement hall and one basketball had to be split among the various auxiliary groups) led to conflict. By decision of the bishop, the M-Men were allowed to use the gymnasium on Monday and Wednesday evenings after nine p.m.; they were also put in charge of the basketball. Though no overt conflict appears in the committee minutes, it is not difficult to decipher a stinging rebuke in the committee’s instruction to the M-men: “We suggest that in a co-operative manner the M men continue to grant the other MIA classes the use of the ball, as at present, when proper authority requests the ball, and when the ball is returned to the M men by one party who should be responsible for the care of the ball, when in the hands of the class borrowing it. At some time it is the purpose of the Recreation Comm[ittee] to provide Ward properties of this nature for the use of the Ward, and until such time we respectfully ask the M Men to co-operate with us in this matter.”41 Perhaps a failure to cooperate had marred inter-auxiliary relations in the past, or maybe the M-Men were unwilling to share the valued basketball. [191] Whatever the reason, church-sponsored basketball seemed to be driving ward members apart. Team spirit and cooperation may have thrived on the court but it did not seem to translate from the M-Men to the rest of the congregation.
The following autumn, when basketball season was scheduled to begin, once again an unexplained controversy divided the ward’s leaders. This time the conflict was more serious. On 14 December 1926, the Recreation Committee minutes recorded that “with regards to basketball, quite a dispute has come up before the Recreation Committee.” Committee members then voted “with regard to having basketball in the Ward” and all members were undecided.42 Basketball continued that season but by the next year, its prospects again seemed dim. In December 1927, the recreation committee argued about leaving up the decorations for the Bishop’s party or removing them to allow basketball. While M-Men representatives “insisted on basketball,” others on the committee suggested fixing up the amusement hall, sanding the floor, and putting curtains on the windows. If such renovations had been made, basketball would have been discontinued. The committee considered boxing and wrestling to be legitimate alternatives.43 The following week, 13 December 1927, the recreation committee chose to continue basketball but to rein in the M-Men with rigid rules. Each player must have gym shoes and 75¢ “must be presented to chairman of recreation committee [192] before they can enter hall.” After three violations of this rule, basketball privileges would be revoked. Further, the committee required M-Men to replace amusement hall decorations before all special events. Just one breach of this rule proscribed future basketball games.44 Three years in the making, a modus operandi emerged among competing interests in the Fifteenth Ward—adherence to strict rules and the fear of prompt punishments opened the gymnasium doors. The Fifteenth Ward experience offers an apt reminder—though an athletic program played a major role in the young men’s auxiliary, it was not the only program that vied for church recreation space. With limited resources, ward recreation leaders had to juggle competing demands to ensure that all groups had the time and space to play.
Throughout the first third of the twentieth century (and continuing today), competitive basketball was the main athletic involvement of young LDS men. By one estimate, in 1928 between eight and ten thousand young men took part in Mormon hoop games. As with other recreational and athletic activities, however, the final score was not tallied in baskets, rebounds, and steals. To LDS leaders, the lessons learned on the basketball court held much larger, even eternal, ramifications. The key to Mormon athletics lay not in the athletic standards reached but in the moral and spiritual standards required before young men could participate. Just like the athletic club in Colonia Juarez, to be a Mormon athlete, you had to be “Mormon.” Members of other [193] faiths participated, but usually only after accepting the moral standards of the LDS church. Players did not have to be baptized Mormons, but they had to be “Mormon” in their behavior. This requirement brought many new members into the church and also brought many wayward Saints back to the fold. As one report observed, “A set of rules was carefully formulated to govern these various events [basketball games]; and many inspirational stories have come to us of young men who reformed their lives in order to live up to the ideals and standards of their associates who were participating.”45 Such was the goal of LDS athletics—inspiration, not perspiration; moral men, not athletic achievement.
Athletics and the “Selling” of the Word of Wisdom
Though athletic programs socialized a generation of progressive-era Mormon adolescents, the most enduring legacy of the program was the rhetorical construction of a connection between athletic excellence and the Word of Wisdom, the LDS dietary code. To this day, stories of athletes refusing to smoke or drink and then excelling in a sporting event are legion throughout the LDS church among believers of all ages. In fact, a mythology has been carefully constructed explicitly connecting dietary obedience and sporting success. As a buttress to a new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom emerging in the early twentieth century, narratives of successful teetotaling athletes, by real-life example, helped church leaders commit young Mormons to a life of abstinence [194] and obedience. While the evolution of the Word of Wisdom has been clearly laid out by able historians, the prominent role played by athletics has yet to be apprehended in any depth. It is in relationship to the Word of Wisdom that LDS athletic programs had the largest impact on the Mormon community. By adhering to the dietary strictures, young men and women became “Mormon.”
Revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith in February 1833, the Word of Wisdom proscribed the use of alcohol, tobacco, and tea and coffee. Furthermore, the revelation instructed the Saints to avoid excessive meat eating and encouraged the use of herbs, fruits, and grains. If members abided this counsel, they were promised “health in their navel and marrow to their bones; And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures; And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint.”46 Throughout the nineteenth century, adherence to the dietary regulations was sporadic. At times, such as the years immediately following the Civil War, obedience to the principle increased while at other times more important issues pushed the dietary strictures aside. The most astute historian of the Word of Wisdom, Thomas G. Alexander, has observed: “We find then a diffuse pattern in observing and teaching the Word of Wisdom in 1900. Some general authorities preached quite consistently against the use of tea, coffee, liquor, tobacco, and meat. None supported drunkenness, and no one insisted on the necessity of vegetarianism. In practice, [195] however, they and other members also occasionally drank the beverages which current interpretation would prohibit.” The first quarter of the twentieth century, however, witnessed the transformation of the dietary code from a “principle with promise” (as the original revelation records) to a central tenet of LDS orthodoxy. Alexander notes that Mormon leaders, including most prominently church presidents Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant, pushed for strict prohibition of alcohol and tobacco not only to inspire moral uplift among church members but to win evangelical acceptance as well. By 1921, obedience to the Word of Wisdom was required for admission to the Temple. To smooth the transition to strict Word of Wisdom adherence, church leaders turned to scientific evidence, pronouncements from the pulpit, and a gradual easing in of abstinence as a requirement for holding church positions and performing church ordinances. Though not noted by Alexander, a tremendous effort to enlist athletics helped smooth the bumpy transition to the new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. Eventually, the transition was successful since, according to Alexander, “nothing, with the possible exception of the wearing of the temple garment, serves to distinguish Latter-day Saints and thus set them apart from the larger community more than does observance of the Word of Wisdom.”47 Sports was central in the transition of the Word of Wisdom from “principle” to “commandment”—from a word of wisdom to the Word of Wisdom. [196]
Stories of athletic prowess and clean living did not lead to the twentieth-century emphasis on abstinence. Prayerful consideration, the context of tradition, and political, social, and economic conditions prompted the change.48 But when it became necessary to “sell” the new interpretation to church members, athletic success through abstinence became a major plank in the campaign. Second only to admonition from church leaders, narratives linking sports and the Word of Wisdom carried the load in convincing young Mormons to abstain. Using examples of prominent abstaining athletes, church leaders and the Improvement Era taught adolescent Mormons that the scriptural promise that adherents would “run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint” translated directly to success on the athletic field.
As the Word of Wisdom gained adherents in the early part of the century, the Improvement Era regularly showcased the athletic success of young Mormons who abstained. Reports abounded about the championships and winning form of MIA teams and school teams made up of abstaining Mormons. One report from Colonia Juarez—where the MIA team placed second in the basketball championship of the Southwest—placed obedience to the Word of Wisdom at the heart of their successful training regimen. With only five players (their only substitute was “out of commission”), the young men from Colonia Juarez made it to the championship final, where they were defeated by Bisbee High School. More importantly, however, the MIA [197] team proved to other contestants the virtues of clean living. “The grit of the M.I.A. boys was the general topic of conversation,” reported the Improvement Era, “and it was said, by an observer, that he had never seen such endurance in young men. Their friends attributed it to the exercise which they obtained on the farms, but their parents believe that it is due to their clean lives and the observance of the Word of Wisdom.”49 The message could hardly have been more clear. Though the Word of Wisdom had yet to be established as a requirement for LDS membership, the link between observance and physical endurance was forged on the basketball courts of the Southwest.
In New Zealand, the rugby team from the Maori Agricultural College, established by the church in 1913, won the Hawk’s Bay Union Foot-ball Cup three successive years. Because they were “strict observers of the word of wisdom,” they not only garnered championships but their contribution was “considerable in putting before the people of this locality one great principle of our gospel.”50 The MAC team might have taught New Zealanders the upside of abstinence but the report in the Improvement Era carried the message to Mormons throughout the world. Cardston (Alberta, Canada) High School—with a team composed of “M Men who attend M.I.A. and who keep the Word of Wisdom”—won the Alberta basketball championship in 1924 and 1925 and received [198] accolades from the church magazine.51 In Laie, Hawaii, when a church-sponsored basketball squad won the Rural Oahu championship, the reason for their triumph was apparent to many. “The ‘Mormon’ school teams are praiseworthy for their fine spirit and clean sportsmanship,” read the report from the Islands, “and the practice of the Word of Wisdom has had much to do with their success. Some people say our boys are ‘different’—they are. Why? We know.”52 The Word of Wisdom made the difference; in effect, abstinence led to the team’s fine spirit, clean sportsmanship, and many victories.
Closer to home, the geography was different but the story remained the same. Young men living the Word of Wisdom and excelling in athletics continued to be extolled by the Improvement Era. An article entitled “Good Team; Noble Work” commended the M-Men baseball team from Winder Ward, winners of the Cottonwood Stake (Salt Lake) pennant, who “made it a rule of their organization that all members of the team should observe the word of wisdom, and that there should be no swearing or vulgar language during any of their games. They were able to keep their pledge.”53 The “noble work” of this “good team” included not championships alone but strict conformity to church [199] principles. The championship basketball team representing Stone Ward (Curlew Stake) received accolades from one church official because they were “clean sports, [and] not a member of the team uses tobacco, or dissipates otherwise.”54 From the islands of the sea to the amusement hall of Winder Ward, LDS athletic champions received approbation not just for winning but for clean living.
Mormon editors and leaders were not alone in praising LDS athletes. The Arizona Gazette (Phoenix), not a Mormon paper, picked up where the Improvement Era left off. After predominantly LDS basketball teams—a high school team from Safford and the Gila College squad—both won their respective state tournaments, the paper came to the conclusion that the LDS lifestyle led directly to athletic accomplishment. “If there is anyone left who wonders just how much help right-living is to an athlete,” the paper asked, “cite him to Arizona’s ‘Mormon’ schoolboys.” The Mormon boys from Safford had defeated “bigger, faster, better-drilled team[s] by the sheer pluck and stamina that come from right living.” Similarly, the Gila College team, with the second smallest enrollment in the conference, went through the entire twenty-four game season without defeat. In a passage that must have thrilled LDS leaders faced with converting adolescents to a strict view of the Word of Wisdom, the newspaper continued: “Mesa, predominantly a ‘Mormon’ community, has a record of athletic achievements that would compare favorably with that of any other town of its size in the country. The tenets of [200] the ‘Mormon’ Church demand temperate habits and abstention from those vices which, it so happens, are most likely to undermine athletic stamina. ‘Mormon’ athletes seldom break training.” The message that the Improvement Era editors took from this was that “These STANDARDS [keeping the Word of Wisdom] comprise a safe recipe for SUCCESS” [emphasis in original].55 Standards and athletic success became the key concepts for “selling” the Word of Wisdom. In Arizona, at least, people outside of the church even bought into the union of abstinence and athletic excellence.
Church leaders quickly fortified the relationship between abstinence and athletic accomplishment by making clear public statements indelibly linking them. At times, church leaders focused on the positive physical effects stemming from abstinence. President Heber J. Grant’s message in general conference of April 1926 used non-Mormon examples to hammer such a message home. “The trained athletes of the nation are pretty good authorities on the harm to the physical body,” argued Grant, “and they are practically a unit that tobacco and liquor do harm the body. Some of the great baseball clubs of America, who have won championships won’t allow liquor or [201] tobacco to be used by their men. The head of the New York Athletic Club, one of the greatest in the country, announces that there is no prospect of success in the athletic line to the man who uses tobacco and liquor.”56 Promises of health had been associated with observing the dietary regulations since the revelation itself promised the obedient “health in their navel and marrow to their bones” in 1833.57 By linking the promises specifically to “success in the athletic line,” Grant authored a new rationale for adherence to the code.
Other prominent Mormons, like Brigham Young University football coach Ott Romney, made less eloquent but still powerful statements that athletic success follows in the wake of righteous living. After BYU’s most productive football season (which included just one loss and one tie) in decades, Romney declared that “clean living, serious endeavor, dedication to a cause are all second nature to ‘Mormon’ boys, and . . . athletic supremacy will follow.”58 Mormon boys, however, did not have to follow BYU football or listen to the radio coverage of general conference to learn of the athletic-abstinence connection that was becoming the core of the “selling” of the new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. The Log of the Vanguard Trail, an MIA lesson [202] manual for boys aged 15 to 16, contained the following information to be included in the MIA lesson for the third week of March 1931. In LDS churches throughout the world, the young men were instructed that “any boy who hopes to excel at athletics must observe the Word of Wisdom. It is the most scientific system of diet ever given to mankind. Its promises are marvelous, but they are all dependent upon strict observance of its teachings.”59 By 1931, the “marvelous promises” of the Word of Wisdom included athletic excellence. The scriptural assurance of running without weariness found a real-world application on track ovals and basketball courts.
Other church leaders went beyond physical blessings and argued that success in most endeavors (though still heavily weighted toward athletics) hinged on abstinence. In a “Message to the Youth of the Land” in 1920, Apostle David O. McKay (who had played football at the University of Utah during the 1890s) advised young men “that if they want to live physically, if they want to be men strong in body, vigorous in mind, if they want to be good sports, enter the basket ball game, enter the football game, enter the contest in running and jumping, if they want to be good scouts, if they want to be good citizens, in business, anywhere, avoid tobacco and live strictly the religious life.”60 [203] It could certainly be argued that abstaining from tobacco and other substances prohibited in the Word of Wisdom might have a direct impact on physical health thus leading to success on the athletic field. But to link abstinence with good citizenship and business acumen signals that the rewards for obedience to the LDS dietary code went beyond the physical.
The beneficiary of abstinence-induced excellence need not even be Mormon. According to some church officials, the promises of physical fitness found in the Word of Wisdom crossed denominational lines to include all who obeyed the guidelines. One month after Charles A. Lindbergh completed the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris, Apostle Richard R. Lyman hailed not only that historic accomplishment but also the physical preparation that led to his much-celebrated stamina. Speaking at YMMIA Conference in June 1927, Lyman pressed Lindbergh into the fold of abstainers who had excelled in feats of physical skill and strength. “This American, Col. Charles A Lindbergh, in whose honor the world celebrates today,” Lyman asserted, “. . . has been devoted to things worthwhile. He has lived strictly in accordance with the ideals of our Church, the ideals of all churches, the ideals of all philosophers.” Lest his listeners become too ecumenical in their appreciation of Lucky Lindy, Lyman then rooted his praise firmly not in the principles of Christianity or philosophy, but in the Word of Wisdom. Lindbergh, he noted, “began his tour without liquor, without tobacco, without tea, without coffee. His life has been such that he has made of himself a man [204] thoroughly efficient, seemingly, in all respects.”61 This “man among men” may not have been a Mormon but by living according to LDS standards, he likewise enjoyed increased physical efficiency—an up-to-date rendering of the scriptural promise of “health in the navel” to all Word of Wisdom adherents.
During the progressive era, members and leaders of the LDS church were not alone in their concern about the detrimental physical effects caused by liquor consumption and tobacco use. In the first quarter of the twentieth century calls for the federal prohibition of alcohol reached a climax with the passage of the eighteenth amendment in 1919, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic liquors.62 Willing to enlist allies from virtually any field, LDS periodicals quoted regularly from well-known athletes and coaches who spoke out against the consumption of tobacco and alcohol. One of the earliest examples of securing non-LDS support in the battle against illicit substances appeared in the June 1913 Improvement Era. Writing about “The Physical Square Deal and the Cigarette Habit Among Boys,” Samuel Hamilton [205] of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, borrowed terms from Theodore Roosevelt and preached to boys about athletics and abstinence. Though Hamilton likely did not have the Word of Wisdom in mind, the editors of the Improvement Era knew a friendly voice when they heard it. Arguing that the “foul habit” of cigarette smoking virtually barred access to professional athletics, Hamilton related the story of a “great ball pitcher with a national reputation” who failed to live up to his potential due to cigarette smoking. Once the pitcher quit smoking, he “recovered his old form, became a star again,” was expected to “earn possibl[y] $20,000” the next season. Other examples of athletic redemption following a commitment to abstinence would become a central staple of the athletic narratives that LDS leaders used to motivate young men to observe the Word of Wisdom. Hamilton’s diatribe extended well beyond the narrative, however. Using phrases that combined the verbal acuity of T. R. and Knute Rockne, Hamilton declared that smokers faced a bleak athletic future. “No physical director in this country will place a cigarette-smoking boy on any crack athletic team,” advised Hamilton. Then, reaching his full Rooseveltian posture, the author insisted that coaches wanted “men with vigor and endurance; men with courage in their hearts, iron in their blood, and with grit that will cut down the grindstones of opposition to the last point. Directors know that the only place in all athletics for the milk-fed, nicotine-bleeched [sic], devitalized mollycoddle is on the [206] bleachers. There neither brains nor effort are necessary; only mouth and lungs are required.”63
Readers of the Improvement Era learned that coach Dan McGugin of Vanderbilt University’s football team believed that cigarettes “retard or stunt the physical growth of a boy” and “make boys stupid.” Moreover, in the coach’s fifty years of athletic experience, he had “never known of a boy who became a confirmed cigarette smoker when young who ever really amounted to anything very much in his life later on.”64 Other coaches weighed in on the subject of tobacco use. Walter Christie, longtime coach at the University of California, warned prospective athletes that “tobacco is the greatest curse in America today, doing far more harm than liquor has ever done.” Apostle Heber J. Grant, in a 1915 address, turned not only to the scriptures in his call for abstinence but to major league manager Connie Mack, “a name familiar to all baseball people.” Surely, Mack’s idea paralleled those of the church leader: “It is my candid opinion that boys of the age of ten to fifteen, who have contracted the habit of smoking cigarettes, do not as a rule amount to anything. They are enfeebled in every way for any kind of work where brains are needed. No boy or man can expect to succeed in this world to a high position who [207] contracts the use of cigarettes.”65 And from the Midwest, Mormons discovered that three state high school athletic associations—those of Minnesota, Kansas, and North Dakota—had prohibited smokers from participating in school athletics. Not only were the athletes in better physical shape, their examples helped other students “to whom many of the athletes are heroes.”66 The evidence of abstinence leading to athletic achievement abounded in the pages of the Improvement Era. Far from the borders of Mormon Utah, winning coaches and athletes subscribed to the core concepts found in the Word of Wisdom and succeeded in athletic contests. Mormon or not, the Word of Wisdom offered a blueprint of abstinence from which all athletes could benefit.
Anecdotal evidence from well-known athletes made up only one prong of the church’s effort to “sell” the new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. “Scientific” evidence—collected using the emerging technique of the sociological survey as well as physiological data—also helped church leaders connect abstinence and athletics. Dr. Frederick J. Pack, professor of history and sociology at the University of Utah and later a member of the Deseret Sunday School Union General Board, published an article on “Smoking and Foot-ball Men” in the October 1912 issue of Popular Science Monthly. After interviewing coaches and athletic directors from fourteen colleges and universities, Pack concluded that only half as many smokers as non-smokers successfully [208] tried out for their respective football teams. Furthermore, in the “able-bodied men” studied, smoking was associated with a loss in lung capacity approaching ten percent. Finally, Pack noted that smoking was “invariably associated with low scholarship.”67 Republished by the Improvement Era on several occasions, this study provided “scientific” backing to the assertion that abstinence improved physical health and enhanced athletic performance. In a 1921 article for the church magazine, Dr. Pack not only reiterated the results of his study but he also offered a telling interpretation of the information. “When it is kept in mind that this investigation had to do only with physically perfect men,” wrote Pack, “the indictment is seen to be an unusually strong and sweeping one, for certainly no one will disagree with the conclusion that if tobacco is bad for this type of men, then it must be even worse for all others” [emphasis in original].68 Although athletes were the subject of Pack’s study, all Mormons could understand the implications of trespassing the Word of Wisdom. If athletes, even “physically perfect men,” could be brought down by smoking, little argument could be made with Pack’s conclusions about the physical effects on average Mormons. Pack’s “scientific” information added sinew to the connection between Word of Wisdom adherence, physical health, and athletic prowess. [209]
Advice from non-Mormon athletes, scientific evidence, and pronouncements from church leaders all played a role in constructing an athletic myth to accompany the Word of Wisdom. The most enduring legacy of this effort, however, was not statistics from social scientists or scoldings from church leaders; rather, what is most remembered is a series of narratives in which Mormon athletes adhered to the LDS dietary code, overcame great odds, and triumphed on various athletic fields. The names of Mormon champions who abstained during this period—Alma Richards, Creed Haymond, and others—continue to resonate with LDS members today. Offering concrete examples of Mormons who first abstained and then overcame athletic obstacles made the connection between the Word of Wisdom and champion athletes complete.
From time to time in the early years of the century, the Improvement Era reported about extraordinary athletic or team achievements by Mormons. In many of the articles, adherence to the Word of Wisdom was listed as one reason behind the success. By the 1920s—when many Americans became obsessed with professional and collegiate sports—a much more vigorous effort was undertaken to link specific athletes with abstinence. Essentially, the church was enlisting celebrity endorsements to entice young Mormons to adhere to the new emphasis on abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. One such article, appearing in 1924, announced the athletic and intellectual achievements of LDS young men throughout the country: Earl Merrill for winning the high school oratory state tournament in Arizona, Melvin Tolman Burke (from Honeyville, Utah) as [210] the national champion high school mile runner; and Pennsylvanian Harry Glancey who made the US Olympic swim team. To explain their various successes, the Improvement Era did not need to look far. “We are simple enough to believe,” announced the self-deprecating editors, “that the clean life which the young people of the Latter-day Saints are enjoined to live has much to do with the success they gain in the various lines of accomplishment. The Word of Wisdom gives all who abide by its counsels, chance for both physical and intellectual progress. The promises of the Lord to those who live right and conform to its requirements are always fully verified.”69 Though this style of story seems strikingly similar to the type of athletic reporting earlier in the century, it marks a subtle but important change. Rather than report on teams that succeeded on local levels or in church competition, reports now centered on individual accomplishments in more significant state or national meets. The Word of Wisdom was leading to success in major athletic events and it was hoped that high-level success would translate into an increased awareness of the potential of abstinence to unlock athletic greatness.
By 1928, the use of sporting superstars to market the new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom had reached full stride. In August, Brigham Young University journalism professor Harrison R. Merrill recounted the success of various Mormon athletes and explained in no uncertain terms the integral role played by the athlete’s [211] adherence to the Word of Wisdom. Many of these sports stars were destined to become household words among Mormons; they became the “folk heroes” who laid the foundations for Word of Wisdom obedience. Setting the scene, Merrill summarized what each LDS athlete had accomplished. To pragmatic twentieth-century American Mormons, these athletic feats proved the promise of abstinence. Alma W. Richards, Merrill’s first example, became known as the best athlete in the world after winning the decathlon and setting a world record in the high jump at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Other Mormon athletes reached similar, if less spectacular, heights in athletic competition. Clinton Larson won the high jump at an inter-allied meet held at Paris in 1919 in addition to holding the world indoor record in the same event. National broad jump champion Clinton Luke and high school mile record holder Melvin Burke both hailed from Utah and belonged to the church. Track athlete Bud Shields, representing Brigham Young University, single-handedly (he was his school’s lone representative) won third place for his university by winning the 220- and 440-yard races. Likewise, Creed Haymond, track star at the University of Pennsylvania, made his mark setting a world record in the 220-yard dash. He also belonged to a relay team which broke world records in the 400-meter, 800-meter, and half-mile relays. And the list went on.70 [212]
It was not unusual for the Improvement Era to laud outstanding Mormon athletic achievements. But this article was not merely congratulatory; it was written to teach church members a message. Immediately following the laundry list of athletic accomplishments, Merrill made his case clearly. “It is interesting to note,” Merrill explained, “that every one of these unusual men is not only a member of the Latter-day Church, but each one has been a more or less rigid observer of the Word of Wisdom. Not a man among those who have won national honors has ever used regularly tea, coffee, tobacco, or strong drink.” Though Merrill employed some measure of sophistry in describing the athlete’s adherence patterns, the message clearly promoted the rigid observance of the dietary directions. To illustrate that point, the author drew at length from testimonials from the abstaining athletes. Melvin Burke’s comments fit Merrill’s argument perfectly: “I have not used regularly tea, coffee, tobacco, or liquor in any form. I am a firm believer in the Word of Wisdom. It is a great feeling to come to the end of a hard contest and still have a reserve for the sprint. I had considerable sickness when a child, but proper living helped me to overcome it.” Likewise, Owen Rowe looked to abstention as a key to his success: “I never have used coffee, tea, tobacco, or liquor in any form. I am a firm believer in the Word of Wisdom and adhere to its teachings rigidly. I know it pays.” To guarantee that his point was not lost in the glorification of these LDS athletes, Merrill quickly returned the spotlight to the Word of Wisdom: “It may be regarded as significant that from a state possessing less that one two-hundred seventy-fifth of the population of the United States there should come so [213] many athletes of national renown and that of that number every one was, is, and expects to continue to be a strict observer of the Word of Wisdom. . . . Of course, the testimonies of these young men do not prove conclusively that the Word of Wisdom is an aid to athletes, but their testimony, since every national character has agreed, is significant, to say the least.”71 The significance of these testimonials was not in exhibiting the spiritual or physical benefits of abstention; rather, the success of Mormon athletes forged a connection between athletic performance and abstinence that made a powerful argument for obedience to Word of Wisdom.
The crescendo of the connection between abstinence and athletic victory occurred in the narrative of Creed Haymond, the University of Pennsylvania track star who refused to violate the Word of Wisdom and was rewarded with world record speed. Long before 1928, church members had been aware of Haymond’s track exploits; it was not until Joseph J. Cannon’s article “Speed and the Spirit” appeared, however, that most Mormons learned the story behind the story. Once Haymond’s narrative was publicized, it quickly became a staple of church folklore. Haymond and the new abstemious interpretation of the Word of Wisdom were forever linked.
Born on 2 December 1893 in Springville, Utah, Haymond was educated in local schools and then went on to the Universities of Utah and Pennsylvania, where he [214] studied dentistry.72 Reflecting on his early commitment to abide by the Word of Wisdom, Haymond recalled:
I have never tasted tea, coffee, tobacco, or liquor in any form. I promised my mother when I was eight years old, I would never break the Word of Wisdom. I was with her in the Utah Stake Tabernacle at the time and Senator Reed Smoot was speaking on that subject. That was twenty-five years ago, and I have kept my promise and expect to the rest of my life. My coaches at Pennsylvania thought it peculiar that I would never take tea during the season or wine before a meet, but told me later that it was that perhaps which kept me up (they guessed), because I never had time to train, but was always in condition.73
It was at the University of Pennsylvania that Haymond permanently linked abstention and athletic success for generations of LDS faithfuls. The time was May 1919, the place was Harvard Stadium, and the occasion was the annual meet of the Inter-Collegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (ICAAAA). Well over 1500 competitors represented the finest colleges and universities throughout the nation. Creed Haymond, captain of the Pennsylvania team, expected to lead his top-ranked squad to the tournament title. On the night before the meet, Penn coach Lawson Robertson (who went on to coach the US Olympic teams in 1920, 1924, and 1928) asked each of his team members to take a little sherry wine to blunt the edge of their nervousness. When Lawson got to Haymond’s room, the star athlete replied, according to Joseph J. Cannon’s account, “I won’t do it, Coach.” Taken aback, Lawson countered, “But, Creed, [215] I’m not trying to get you to drink. I know what you ‘Mormons’ believe. I’m giving you this as a tonic, just to put you all on your metal.” Unwilling to take the coach’s tonic, Creed set himself apart from other team members and set himself up as the scapegoat if Penn were to lose the meet. In his room that night, Haymond questioned his actions. Later, Haymond related his doubts to Cannon. “What right had he to disobey? Only one right, one reason, this thing he had been following and believing all his life—this Word of Wisdom. But what is it anyway, something Joseph Smith thought up or really a revealed message to us from God? It was a critical hour of the young man’s life and, with all the spiritual forces of his nature suffusing him, he kneeled down and earnestly, very earnestly, asked the Lord to give him a testimony as to the source of the revelation he had believed and obeyed. Then he went to bed and slept the sound slumber of healthy youth.”74
The rest of the heroic narrative is familiar to many Mormons. The spiritual manifestation that Haymond sought would come clearly to him during the races the next day. When he awoke, Haymond was greeted with the news that his teammates were vomiting, sick from the coach’s tonic. Haymond, however, felt fine as he lined up in the hundred-yard dash. Poised in lane two, Haymond crashed to the ground as the gun sounded. Apparently, a taller athlete had used the second lane in the semi-finals and kicked a hole for his toes an inch or two behind Haymond’s fresh marks. The great [216] thrust at the start of the race had broken through the dirt between the marks and sent Haymond to his knees. Undaunted, Haymond hopped to his feet and pursued the others. Describing the first heroic feat of Haymond-as-Word-of-Wisdom-warrior, Cannon described the scene:
No coach or crowd would expect a man to get up and make a pitiful spectacle of himself running behind. . . . [Haymond] got up and ran behind, but, man, how he did run! His brain on fire—the school—the team—Robby [Coach Robertson]—desperate, but not hopeless—at sixty yards, the last in the race—then seeming to fly—passing the fifth man—the fourth—the third—the second—only the tall Johnson ahead—and close to the tape—lips away from teeth—face drawn in agony—heart bursting with the strain—sweeping in that climax of whirlwind swiftness past Johnson to victory. The timers caught the flash as he crossed the tape and called it ten seconds flat;—but no man could know the actual speed of that running.
But Haymond’s heroics did not end there. Later, in the 220-yard dash, Haymond raced in the last qualifying heat and then in the finals just five minutes later. Though exhausted from the preliminary, Haymond had no trouble running away from the competition and winning the finals eight yards ahead of his nearest rival. Haymond, “the Mormon speed demon,” had swept his events that day; moreover, he had proven to himself the value of abstinence.75 [217]
At Harvard Stadium in May 1919, a Mormon hero was introduced to his church and to the world. In retelling the story ten years later—and fitting it in the framework of an heroic struggle against insurmountable odds—Joseph Cannon created a Mormon icon worthy of the new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom.76 In their own right, Haymond’s athletic achievements would have garnered him fame and respect throughout the church. When Cannon connected that success with Word of Wisdom adherence, Haymond’s experience became a proof-text of the power of abstinence. From Cannon’s poetic phrasing, the moral of the story was clear:
At the end of that strange day, as Creed Haymond was going to bed, there suddenly came to memory his question of the night before regarding the divinity of the Word of Wisdom. The procession of that peculiar series of events then passed before his mind,—his team-mates taking the wine and failing—his own abstinence and victories, victories that were amazing to himself. Had Daniel and his three continent companions as startling reason for testimony? He had asked the favor of some witnesses from the Lord. What relation did all those things have to his prayer? In the sports of track and field, does God teach his purposes?77 [218]
Clearly, as Haymond concluded and Cannon recorded, God’s purposes could be revealed through sporting success if athletes followed the divine advice given in the Word of Wisdom.78
During the initial decades of the twentieth century, leaders of the LDS church relied on athletic events to help members learn the purposes of God. Whether it was the social cooperation and teamwork skills inculcated in team sports, or increased loyalty to the dominant social group, young Mormons were provided myriad opportunities to participate in sports in the hopes that their experiences would transform wayward youths into responsible adults. The use of abstaining athletic heroes to “sell” the emerging interpretation of the Word of Wisdom capped the flurry of athletic activities during the period. The massive athletic programs sponsored by the church did not focus on play for play’s sake—there was purpose behind each activity, a point to every game. LDS athletics did not exist to make records, they sought to make moral men. [219]
