EVE AT SPORT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 832, 28 November 1929, Page 11

EVE AT SPORT

Brilliant Inter-House Gala Ahead

SATURDAY’S ATTRACTION Expected to surpass in the brilliance of its kaleidoscopic colouring effects ail past carnivals, the sixth annual Inter-house Girls’ Sports Association’s meeting is to be held at Carlaw Park on Saturday. Weeks and weeks of training by the girls of the soft goods houses of Auckland is culminating this week, and. if the weather smiles on the venture, Rugby League headquarters will be the venue of many thousands of Aucklanders on Saturday afternoon. The girls themselves are particularly anxious to make this sixth annual carnival the best ever in the short history of the movement in Auckland, for the proceeds are to be devoted to the upkeep of the Interhouse Girls’ Club, opened in August last. Organised and run for the first time six years ago by the girls and men of the soft goods houses these annual displays have grown in popularity year by year, and in recent days, under the direction of Lieutenant T. P. Laffey, X.Z.S.C., and his assistants a degree of superlative efficiency has been attained. There are estimated to be between 3,000 and 4,000 girls employed by the soft goods houses of Auckland City, and the 500 of them who will take part in Saturday’s carnival will be the biggest representation to date. This year the ages of the girls taking part varies between 15 and 21

years, and is appreciably lower on the average than during past years. Many of the g-irls twill be competing in their first carnival of the kind. The ideal of the association is to make possible the greatest physical good to the greatest number. Thus all the 500 competitors will take part in the grand march and the physical drill displays, and it has been arranged that in team events, different teams will represent their houses in each, so as not to make the afternoon too strenuous for a small number of the competitors. The highest expert medical opinion is still divided as to the effect of the more strenuous forms of formerly exclusive male pastimes on the "weaker sex,” but there is no gainsaying the benefits which a carnival such as next Saturday’s will have on the competitors. , , In Auckland in recent days, athletic sport has fallen on lean times. It is hard to visualise a similar carnival by male competitors the same wide public interest which has followed Auckland girls’ sports meetings in past years. BRINGING ENTHUSIASM The girls have entered a field, hitherto exclusively male. They have brought to it enthusiasm, and have been prepared to put into it the long and intense training necessary for success. As yet the blight of specialisation has not made its appearance in the form which breaks world’s records, but detracts from the enjoyment of the sport, as a sport, by the masses. In an age when sport in tne or other of its many varied lorms plays a greater part in the lives of many people than politics or religion it is of vital importance what form that sport takes. On Saturday, 500 joyously fit, keen and brilliantly bedecked Auckland girls will demonstrate in its latest form the evolution of the modern girl. The elimination contest for the physical culture section was held last evening, and of the 12 houses competing, the following three will fight out the final: Robert Grier and Sons, Milne and Choyce, Ltd., and the Plummer Hat Company. The windows of the soft goods houses of Queen Street are decorated with the trophies won last year, and the representatives of each respective house will fight hard to retain them, or win others. Hurdling, skipping, sprinting and teams races will be included in the programme, and there will be something new in the gymnastic tableaux. Two new cups, donated by the Farmers’ Trading Company and the directors of Messrs. Milne and Choyce, have been added to the trophy list for Saturday’s meeting.