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Carlisle Indians Made It A Whole New Ballgame
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Thorpe took a couple of practice strides toward the bar, and then took off and scissored his body over the bar. As the track boys stared at him, agape, Thorpe laughed and strolled away, rejoining his friends.
Among those who watched Thorpe's jump at track practice was a student named Harry Achenbald. He went straight to Warner to report what happened. The next morning, Warner summoned Thorpe.
"Have I done anything wrong?" Thorpe asked.
"Son, you've only broken the school record in the high jump. That's all."
"I didn't think it was very high," Thorpe said. "I think I can do better in a tracksuit."
Warner put an arm around the boy and told him that wouldn't be a problem. That afternoon, he exchanged his overalls for a uniform and was on the team.
After 18 months at Carlisle, Thorpe had grown almost five inches. A couple of hard-laboring summers had helped him put on 30 pounds. By that spring day in 1907 when he cleared the high bar, his weight was up to 145, and he had worked his way onto the football scrub team, called the Hotshots.
Warner turned his new prodigy over to Exendine for athletic tutoring. Exendine held most of the Carlisle records in track and field, but he had nothing to teach the skinny teen who moved like a breeze. It took only one meet for Thorpe to break all of Exendine's marks.
"Before Jim hit Carlisle, I was quite the athlete around there," Exendine remembered. "I held the college records in the broad jump and the high jump, the shot put and the hammer, and several other track and field events, and I was captain of the football team. But it took Jim just one day to break all my records. We went to a dual meet together and he won everything."
* * *
In August 1907, as fall football practices began, Thorpe pleaded with Warner for a chance to try out for the varsity. Warner was reluctant; Thorpe's build struck him as too "scrawny" for football and he didn't want his best track prospect to get hurt. But the boy pestered him so tirelessly that he relented.
"All right," Warner said irritably. "If this is what you want, go out there and give my varsity boys a little tackling practice. And believe me, that's all you'll be to them."
