Keene Fitzpatrick - Princeton University

Princeton University

Fitzpatrick was hired by Princeton in 1910 and remained the track coach and athletic trainer there for 22 years. Four of his Princeton track teams placed second in the intercollegiates—1920, 1922, 1923, and 1925. Fifteen of his track athletes from Princeton won individual intercollegiate championships, including two double champions, Charles R. Erdman and Randolph E. Brown, and two repeat champions, J. Coard Taylor and Ralph G. Hills.

After his first year at Princeton, the Daily Princetonian published an editorial in November 1911 proclaiming Fitzpatrick as "the best trainer Princeton has ever had," and concluded, "if we were asked to name the man who had done most for Princeton athletics in general during the past year, we should name Keene Fitzpatrick, the trainer of a championship football team, the trainer of a championship baseball team and the coach of the first Princeton track team that has beaten Yale in fifteen years."

In 1918, collegiate track coaches formed the Association of College Track Coaches of American and elected Fitzpatrick as their first president.

By 1919, Fitzpatrick had been a track coach for 30 years and was known as the "Dean of College Coaches." A columnist that year observed: "Princeton has learned to love Fitzpatrick just as much as it does the members of the famous Poe family, Sam White and others who have brought glory to the Jungletown institution. He has built up the athletic department, just as he had done at Michigan..." In 1921, another writer noted: "His success in coaching in all branches of sport makes him one of the greatest athletic instructors of all time."

In 1922, syndicated sports columnist Billy Evans wrote a profile about Fitzpatrick that was published in newspapers across the United States. Evans compared Fitzpatrick to Connie Mack:

"In collegiate track athletics Keene Fitzpatrick occupies much the same place that Connie Mack holds in major league baseball. Fitzpatrick stands out as one of the greatest developers of college athletics in the history of the track sport. ... Much of Fitzpatrick's success is due to his knowledge of the anatomy. He is a great conditioner."

In 1927, Fitzpatrick spoke publicly in favor of allowing college football teams to conduct early practice before the school year began. He argued that the lack of sufficient time for training and conditioning was the greatest cause of football injuries. He argued that, although football is the most strenuous of all sports, it gets the least amount of actual preparation. In 1928, U.S. Senator Royal S. Copeland joined in Fitzpatrick's call for "systematic training." Copeland credited Fitzpatrick with doing "more to develop straight thinking than any college president of modern times."