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 The high spirits of St. Dunstan’s “Golden Age” were reflected in the school’s sporting endeavours. In 1947, the hockey team was the Maritime Intercollegiate champion, a winning tradition continued by the Rugby squad, which claimed the Maritime Intercollegiate crown in 1952. The sporting “Saints” also won hockey, basketball, and rugby championships in the various city and provincial leagues in which they competed, as well as in the recently formed New Brunswick-PEI Intercollegiate League.
Even in years when no championships were won, there was plenty of athletic spirit at St. Dunstan’s. Despite the frequent curse of foul weather, the annual campus track and field day seems to have been a perennial success, and the Amateur  Athletic Association managed junior and intramural leagues, in addition to the extramural senior teams.  A particular boost for the sporting “Saints” came in 1947, when A. J. MacAdam—hailed in his SDU student days as “one of the greatest athletes ever to wear the Red and White”—began a lengthy coaching career at St. Dunstan’s, taking direction of the school’s rugby program. More good news followed in 1951, with the opening of the long-awaited Alumni Gymnasium. A. J. MacAdam later extended his coaching activities into the hockey rink, and served St. Dunstan’s in various capacities until his death in 1969.
 Like all other aspects of school life, of course, athletics had its ups and downs. Particularly striking, from today’s perspective, is the near-total absence of women from the record of organized sport at St. Dunstan’s during this period, despite the campus having been officially coeducational since 1942. At the time, however, the main concern—as reflected in the Athletics pages of  The Red and White student magazine—was the limited pool of talent available to SDU sports teams, relative to their competitors from larger institutions. This issue was often linked with the sometimes parlous state of the school’s intramural and junior leagues. In a 1947 column, for example, the sports editor lamented that “no attempt is ever made to provide coaching or adequate instruction for the [intramural] teams,” while the Fall 1953 issue carried this stern admonition: “The number of students who played in the intra-mural and junior leagues was extremely low. It must be remembered that our senior teams are dependent on the potential derived from these junior leagues.”
Yet St. Dunstan’s had little ambition to be a sporting powerhouse. For decades, the entry for the Amateur Athletic Association in the school’s conspectus concluded with this curt reminder: “Precautions are taken that students do not take such an active part in athletics as would militate against success in their academic work.” The spirit of this message was echoed in the Winter 1950 issue of The Red and White, with the sports editor warning readers, “Sports at S.D.U. must never interfere with studies or the practice of the Faith.... We are not an athletic institution as some colleges seem to be today. It is up to those of us who love sports to  see that we never do become athletically insane.”
There is little evidence, however, that these well-meaning concerns were warranted. It appears that SDU enjoyed a mature, vigourous (and sometimes victorious) athletic culture, driven by a keen, but not obsessive, competitive spirit and an appreciation of the sporting virtues of fair play,  team work, and physical fitness. As the Alumni Association proudly pointed out in its 1954 Centennial booklet, St. Dunstan’s athletes “went out from the College Campus well-equipped to enter the battle of life.” Even the intramural and junior leagues—apparently so worrisome to The Red and White sports department—seem to have managed a volume and variety of athletic activity in most years that would be the envy of many a school today.
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Click here or on the thumbnail image to the left to browse digitized R&W Athletics pages from this period.
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