Iowa
Old Press
THE FREMONT COUNTY HERALD
Sidney, Fremont County, Iowa
February 3, 1923
OTTE RANKS HIGH
This paper maintains that athletics are needed to make school
work successful, especially in the matter of graduating boys.
Some folks feel that time devoted to athletics is wasted and that
those who indulge in such pursuits must necessarily neglect their
studies and lose the value of the education they are sent to
school to acquire but this is a mistaken notion, for those who
indulge in athletics in any school in this state must first have
their grades in good shape or they are not permitted to continue
in athletics. That athletes make as high percentage in grades as
non-athletes is evidenced by a report from the State University
at Iowa City which runs as follows:
"Most folks know Gordon C. Locke, captain and all-American
quarterback of the University of Iowa's 1922 football team, as
the superman of the gridiron and not as a scholar. But
comparatively few have seen Gordon Locke of Denison, Iowa, piling
up marks in the classroom that have given him an average of B
plus at the university, where he is now in the college of law. It
has been found that the members of the football team maintain an
uncommonly high average in the classroom. All athletes have to
maintain certain scholastic standards if they wish to remain
eligible for athletics. Some of them 'hit the high spots' in
grades. F. Lowell Otte of Sidney, Iowa, left end on the 1922
eleven, went through the last semester with a straight string of
A's. V. C. Shuttleworth, left halfback on the 1922 eleven has a B
average and Edmund Rich of Maquoketa and Chester Mead of Calumet,
both members of the 1922 championship eleven maintained B
averages. Out of the first fifteen men on the squad two were
engineers, four law students, one dental student and eight in the
college of liberal arts." Lowell's many friends here will be
glad to learn that he is making good in the classroom as well as
in the armor of the Iowa football squad.
[transcribed by W.F., March 2007]