"A good teacher makes a good coach." This axiom is the reason why Barney Hyman, a good-looking, genial, and intelligent Jewish young man, is the peer of high school track mentors in New York City.
Barney is the kind of man you see but once and yet make fast friends with him. He has been among youngsters ever since he was in charge of the Greenwich House in New York. He began teaching in the city high schools in 1921 and started coaching track and field enthusiasts one year later.
Since that time he has turned out one championship team after another. In fact his boys have won eight straight indoor track titles and ten successive outdoor championships, thereby meriting Barney the distinction of being ranked with the best athletic coaches in the country.
GOOD PSYCHOLOGIST
However, his handling of youngsters is not limited to the indoor boards or the cinder paths. He is also an adept in adolescent psychology. It was because of this keen insight that Coach Hyman received the difficult administrative task of running the New Utrecht High School’s annex out in Bensonhurst. This school has many discipline cases and administrator Hyman’s experience with smart-aleck youngsters for the past sixteen years stands him in good stead at this institution.
Barney Hyman is alert! He is teeming with intelligent ideas on school administration. When he speaks on his subject even the sages of the Board of Education up at Fifty-ninth street heed him. For this man can back up his ideas with the results of years of successful experimenting in the field of education.
ENTIRE SCHOOL TRACK MINDED
City College is noted for its grinds, Notre Dame for its football team and, needless to say, New Utrecht is noted from the rock-bound shores of Inwood to the bleak stretches of the Brooklyn Flatlands for its track enthusiasm.
It is one thing for a coach to put out a winning team and there-by attract the student body’s attention. Students and fans the world over follow a winner. But here at N. U. H. S. the boys not only follow the team but cry to be on it. The number of candidates each term who answer Coach Hyman’s call for new members of the track team is a tribute to this man’s personality. In fact, that’s why every incoming member of the frosh class is looked upon as a prospective national champion.
HAS TURNED OUT GREAT ATHLETES
We have seen this coach handling his boys at track meets and at practice sessions with that skill, interest and enthusiasm that youngsters appreciate and respect. He knows just when to criticize and yet is not succinct in praise. If a youngster has it in him to become a track man, under Barney’s supervision and tutelage this talent will emerge.
These very same lads can be seen later participating in national championship meets, in Olympics here and abroad. Among a few of the great Jewish athletes whom Barney started on the road to fame and athletic recognition are Sol (Happy) Furth, Dave Adelman, Otto Rosner, Ira Singer and more recently Danny Taylor.
ALL CHAMPS
Happy Furth, as well as these other chaps whom we have just mentioned, learned his track rudiments under Coach Hyman’s care. Furth was a great broad jumper and hurdler in high school and, later, while at college, was captain of the New York University track team. When Sol participated in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a member of the American track and field contingent, another laurel wreath was laid at Coach Hyman’s feet.
Dave Adelman, former intercollegiate shot put champion, started heaving the shot in 1923 and before his coach was through with him in 1925, he had smashed the then existing P. S. A. L. record beyond recognition. Dave went abroad with the U. S. Maccabi team to Palestine. He won the shot put title at the Jewish Olympic games in Tel Aviv two years ago.
Otto Rosner and Ira Singer learned what poise, balance and synchronized running action meant through the skilled teachings of this young track wizard and were two of the early reasons which set New Utrecht on its way to successive track championships. Otto ran in the high mile races and Ira burned up the cinders in the 440-yard sprints. Ira became national champion at this distance not long after he graduated from the school where, in our estimation, he learned as much about track as he’ll ever know.
Danny Tavlor, who still is a student at this Brooklyn school, is breaking his own new records each time he heaves the shot. He is tossing the little iron ball in the neighborhood of fifty-six feet, nine and one-fourth inches. He now not only holds the P. S. A. L. title for this distance but the world’s title as well. His coach is counting on him for an added few feet.
COACH, LECTURER, ADMINISTRATOR
We recall the time several years ago when Barney presented a plaque to Dave Adelman and Frank Labes for hurling the shot put over fifty feet. They were the first high school lads to accomplish this feat. Now, we believe, if he can coach Danny to pass the sixty-foot mark, smiling Barney Hyman will present the youngster with a twelve-pound silver shot put.
His administrative duties at the school do not keep him away from the important job of being with the boys at practice sessions twice a week. Not so long ago he suffered an accident at a practice session in one of the Brooklyn armories and as a result he is hobbling about on crutches. But despite this handicap he gets about and is ably assisted by his former pupil, Happy Furth.
This unassuming young chap delivered a series of lectures at New York University on his ideas and beliefs in track and they have been published in the "Wingate Series of High School Athletics." In these articles coach Hyman sets forth in a sane and thoroughly comprehensive manner the physiological, the mechanical and the psychological aspects of proper form and condition. He steers clear of the prevailing dogmatic tenets that so many other coaches throughout the country tenaciously adhere to. Barney uses his own system and produces championship teams.
PRESENT PROSPECTS BRIGHT
His present track squad looks like a good bet and already has brought him his ninth indoor victory. Likewise he expects to do equally as well in the coming P. S. A. L. outdoor meets this year.
We would like to see what this great track coach would do if he had an entire high school in his own charge. We feel confident that the results would be as extremely interesting and successful as his track teams have been at New Utrecht High.
THE SPORTING CALENDAR
Tonight at the Ridgewood Grove Abe Coleman, battle-scarred Jewish wrestler will grapple with Tony Colesano in a specially arranged bout. George Calza meets Hans Steinke in the feature wrestling match. Eli Fischer, another Jewish heave-and-grunter, takes on one of Italy’s favorite sons, Casey Columbo.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
