Vaughn Blanchard

Vaughn Seavey Blanchard (July 11, 1889 – November 26, 1969) was an American track and field athlete who competed in the 110 m hurdles and in the exhibition baseball tournament at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He attended Bates College in Lewiston Maine and later became a well known physical education proponent in Michigan.

Biography Blanchard was born in Franklin, New Hampshire in 1889 and graduated from Pittsfield High School in Pittsfield, New Hampshire in 1908. Blanchard graduated from Bates College in 1912 where he was the Maine intercollegiate champion for three years and won the junior low hurdles national championship in 1911.

During World War I in 1917 Blanchard trained troops at Camp Wadsworth in South Carolina in physical fitness and then temporarily taught at the University of Alabama before returning to Massachusetts to teach at Medford High School. Blanchard was a proponent of intramural sports and "believed that there was an overemphasis on competitive athletics. He favored a withdrawal from outside competition and endorsed the development of a program of greater intraschool, intramural activity" and he also supported students managing, coaching, and organizing the sports events.