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Acadia Amateur Athletic Association
Herbin Leads Men’s New Sports Group
In the days before physical education departments, athletic directors or dedicated coaches, students at Acadia University had to run the university’s sports program. Thanks in part to the hard work of John F Herbin, Acadia’s male students decided in 1889 to dissolve the three clubs that controlled rugby, cricket and baseball and form the Acadia Amateur Athletic Association, or AAAA, to organize, manage and encourage sport at Acadia. All male students were members once they paid the fee and agreed to the by-laws. Herbin, the first President, was assisted by a Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer; an executive committee of nine managed sport on a day-to-day basis. Each sport had a sub-committee, usually chaired by the sport’s captain, to look after it and to represent it on the executive. The rugby-football committee had five members, other committees had three members who were elected at the annual meeting.
The AAAA soon became one of the most important campus groups; it was “the only Society existing, with the approval of the college authorities, for the maintenance of field sports.” One of its first projects was to work with the University administration to build and equip a gymnasium. The group was responsible to maintain campus sports facilities and supplied most of the equipment; only members were allowed to use the equipment or play on an AAAA-sponsored team. The AAAA was also responsible for finding and scheduling games. While the faculty had final approval, the association had the right to accept or reject challenges coming from other athletic associations, whether from town or university. Another major responsibility was to determine the criteria for athletic awards and to award them to those men who qualified. The group first set standards for awarding an Athletic “A”during the 1902-03 college year and, in later years, added “distinction” awards for those who were particularly active or successful in intercollegiate sport. By the late 1960s, changing conditions and staffed athletic departments meant that the AAAA was no longer needed and it was dissolved.
(Acadia Athenaeum, December 1897; June 1903)
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