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Show us Released by Western Newspaper Union. '"pHE biggest athletic plant in the - world is located at the Great Lakes naval training base, less than 50 miles north of Chicago. The sports facilities of Great Lakes are statistically staggering. Paul Bunyan would find conditions ideal. The plant has to be big. Roughly, the many teams there include in-clude 136,200 participants, although quite a few of the sailors are on more than one team, since there are approximately 75,000 at the station now. By actual count there were 50,800 men taking part in various sports at one time. Ten huge gymnasiums provide 40 regulation size basketball courts, 10 swimming pools, 11 recreation centers cen-ters with boxing rings, table tennis, etc., and 10 bowling alleys. One of those 10 swimming pools is the largest in the world. It's practically prac-tically a sixth Great Lake, measuring measur-ing 165 feet by 75, its width being as great as the length of standard tanks. The pool's capacity is 660,000 gallons. It will accommodate 700 sailors at a time. Participation In checking each sport, we find: Basketball A total of 20,000 players. play-ers. There are 500 squads in recruit training with 20 men on each squad, 60 in ship companies with 10 on each, 50 in the service school with 10 men and 50 in the hospital unit with 10 men on each. Track A total of 20,000 men entered en-tered the station's championship tournament. Boxing The title tournament drew 5,000 entries, embracing all weight divisions except flyweight. None of the sailors are that small 112 pounds or less. Volley Ball Approximately 30,000 men competing. Bowling Total of 300 teams in league matches;. 20,000 sailors participating. par-ticipating. Approximately 20,000 men take part in each of these sports: soft-ball, soft-ball, touchball and crew racing. Only 200 men compete in swimming, but all sailors at the station are forced to pass rigorous tests each week. Navy Baseball One of the most amazing records was made by the baseball club, coached by Lieut. Mickey Cochrane, former Athletics and Tiger star. In 77 games against professionals, semi-pros semi-pros and college teams, the sailor LIEUT. MICKEY COCHRANE nine attracted 375,000 fans and a gate of $150,000. That was an average aver-age attendance of 5,000 a game considerably better than several major ma-jor league teams could show for their home attendance. Great Lakes has the answer for individuals who question the value of "varsity" athletic teams in the armed services. The training station maintains varsity var-sity teams in three sports basketball, basket-ball, baseball and football. Last year those teams played a total of 125 games before 600,000 spectators, grossing $265,000. Baseball was the biggest drawing card; 36 basketball basket-ball games drew 100,000 customers and earned $15,000. The 12 football games with college teams grossed approximately $125,000. These figures give you a fairly good idea of the vast sports program pro-gram in progress at Great Lakes. Those who have visited the station are agreed that civilian athletics, tven in the bigger universities, are almost trivial in comparison. The Great Lakes athletic program to unsurpassed. It is necessary to ise superlatives in describing its progress because of the sheer size tf the undertaking. Great Lakes has supplied the right answer to the triticism of the comparatively few Individuals who dislike the thought tf athletics for the armed forces. SPORT SHORTS D. Frank Strafaci, of golfing fame, Is I staff sergeant with the army in Australia. B. The St Louis Browns led all rimerican league teams in night fames last year, winning 16 while losing 7. Johnny Niggeling, veteran muckle bailer, won six for them. 0. Four players on the 1943 roster of the New York Giants were introduced intro-duced to the major leagues by the late John McGraw. They were Carl HubbelL Mel Ott Harry Danning ind Hank Leiber. |