Sport: Overhaul at Oberlin

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Winning teams? But what about the claim that Scott wants to do away with such antiquated sport rituals as keeping score? Nonsense, he says. "To tell a competitive athlete who is training three and four hours a day, day in, day out, year after year, to not be concerned with victory is liberal snobbery. Or at best it is the remark of someone who simply does not understand the agonistic struggle that is an integral part of the competitive sports experience. It is just as wrong to say winning isn't anything as it is to say winning is the only thing."

Machismo. Scott has also replaced traditional classes in horseback riding with such courses as "Sports and the Mass Media" and "BodyMind Harmony Through Gymnastics." Upon discovering that last year's budget had been spent almost exclusively on men's sports, Scott added two females to his staff to promote women's athletics and "break down the machismo atmosphere." To help eliminate the distinction between so-called major and minor sports, he did away with admission charges to all Oberlin sporting events. And to give athletes more of a say, he granted them veto power over the selection of coaches and the right to help decide their own training rules. "There's more of a team feeling now," says Marty Dugan, co-captain of the basketball team. "It's not just the coach telling you to do something. There's room for questioning." Dugan will soon be on the receiving end when, at Scott's request, he will coach the golf team, the first student to hold such a position.

Though Scott's critics scoff at such plans as having team members vote on starting lineups, there is anything but anarchy on the playing fields of Oberlin. In fact, Scott's quest for "excellence without dehumanizing the athlete" seems to be succeeding. Attendance at exercise classes has more than doubled, and over 30 students are now majoring in phys. ed., a department that was all but ignored in recent years. This season the football team won two of nine games with a lame-duck coach, but Scott claims little credit for the improvement. He agrees with President Fuller that it is too early in his four-year contract to pass judgment on Oberlin's athletic experiment. "The real verdict won't be in for a few years," Fuller says, "but if it does work, I'm sure many other schools will adopt the approach."