Grudge Fight

Matt Mann, son of an English saloon keeper, learned to swim in the dirty streams below the woolen mills at Leeds, where the water dyed him blue one day, red the next. At 8 he was junior swimming champion of England, at 22 he went to the U. S. on a professional barnstorming tour. Robert Kiphuth was born & bred in upstate New York, took all his exercise on land. At 22 he was a punctilious instructor in physical education at Yale.

Swimmer Mann could swim so well that he was hired to coach at Yale, Harvard, Syracuse, Navy and almost every athletic club that had a pool, finally took over swimming at the University of Michigan in 1926. Instructor Kiphuth, in the meantime, had been expounding his theories on body-building with such success that he was appointed swimming coach at Yale. When the 1936 Olympic Games came around, Yale's Kiphuth was named coach of a U. S. swimming team for the third time and his feat of twelve years without defeat in a collegiate dual meet was proclaimed all over the land.

This did not please Michigan's Mann. Nor did it please Michigan rooters, because while Yale had been piling up a notable record* in the East, Michigan had won eight out of ten Big Ten championships, seven National Collegiate championships.

Yale, indeed, had defeated Michigan twice (1928 and 1930) during its long winning streak, but Michigan had more recently defeated Yale in intercollegiate meets.

Coach Mann, disgruntled over the nationwide ballyhoo given Yale's invincibility, demanded a showdown. But Yale year after year had no open date on its schedule. This rebuff, although probably unintentional, precipitated one of the most publicized coaching feuds in collegiate history. Coach Kiphuth frankly disliked his aggressive Midwestern rival, saw no use for his mechanical rabbits and other training gadgets used to develop stamina and pace. Coach Mann looked with disdain on his Eastern rival who had taught himself to teach swimmers by watching others swim.

What annoyed Matt Mann most was the Kiphuth method of training swimmers in a gymnasium, the Kiphuth stunt of sitting on the bottom of the Yale pool in a diving helmet to observe his pupils from underneath.

At long last, last week, Yale met Michigan at New Haven. In its magnificent Payne Whitney natatorium, Yale lined up a green but well-rounded team, which had chalked up nine victories and no defeats this season. Michigan's team, also undefeated, was rated better. It included Tom Haynie, generally considered the best all-round college swimmer in the U. S., and Ed Kirar, intercollegiate sprint champion. As might have been expected, Michigan won, but only after the score had been tied three times and finally clinched (41-to-34) in the very last event on the program when Michigan's Haynie beat Yale's Captain John Macionis by a touch in the anchor leg of the 400-yd. relay.

Matt Mann and Robert Kiphuth put on sports-photograph smiles and shook hands {see cut}.

* Yale was finally defeated by Harvard last March after 163 straight victories.

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