As talked about in chapter four New York in the late nineteenth-century was the wealthy sportsmen community. As well as Philadelphia and Boston these three cities were dominant and elite. As well as being very wealthy and dominant, these cities were very large compared to the other cities. A great example that Radar explained in the book is James Gordan Bennett Jr. who used his fathers fortune to win the world's first transatlantic yacht race. He was dominant is track and Field as well as played polo.
After reading this I noticed it was similar to my high school hockey experience in Ohio. There were three major cities in my high school career that were always very dominant and prestige in hockey. Those cities were Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus. I feel that these three cities imitate how New York, Philly and Boston were like. Each city is very wealthy and have very prestige private schools that students pay large amounts of money to go to. Some schools for example are St. Francis in Columbus and Toledo, and St. Edwards, and University School in Cleveland. They are all very wealthy and all of these teams have been at the top of the state rankings for the past decade. Smaller schools such as my school in Findlay always had a challenge when playing the teams that were more wealthy. I feel that not only Ohio sees this but other states as well.
Here is link that if anyone wants to take a peak at how the rankings stand, most of the teams near the top are from those cities that I listed off.
http://www.ushsho.com/ohrank.htm
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Unless I am reading the list that you posted incorrectly, it seems that 4 of the top 5 schools are also Catholic Schools. Since that probably means they are private, I wonder if being a private school makes as much or more of a difference than the city in which they are located? Nonetheless, you make a good point about how difficult it was for a smaller school like yours to compete against larger, more wealthy schools. And that was exactly the advantage that many of the sporting communities probably had in the 19th century. You have illustrated the point that wealth continues to play a large role in the success of certain more expensive sports.
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