A Centennial View of
the Student Experience at the
University of Chicago
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Cross Country Club, 1901. An auxiliary to the track team, the Cross Country Club included among its officers president Eli P. Gale (SB 1903), middle row, third from left, and secretarytreasurer Xenephon de B. Kalamatiano (AB 1903), middle row, second from right. This group portrait was handtinted in watercolor by a devoted fan. Photograph by Martyn. |
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University of Chicago and Waseda University baseball teams, Tokyo, 1910. Between 1910 and 1933 the University of Chicago played a series of exhibition baseball games against Waseda and Keio Universities. The visits of the Japanese players to Chicago and the Chicago teams' tours of Japan were an eagerly anticipated feature of the athletic season. Professor Abe of Waseda stands at left. |
Physical Culture and Athletics
The
Full Range of Sports
Although the success of the
football team brought fame and public attention to University of Chicago
sports, it also tended at times to cast a shadow across the achievements
and efforts of other athletes. Chicago men and women have always competed
in an array of sports, including baseball, gymnastics, tennis, track,
wrestling, swimming, and basketball, many of which were organized for
intra-campus competition in the University's first year. The University's
first basketball tournament featured divinity students against undergraduates.
It did not take long, though, for University of Chicago teams to succeed at the intercollegiate level. In 1894, the tennis team, behind the efforts of Sam and Carr Neel (SB 1897), won the Western Conference and National Championships in doubles play. Tennis won conference titles again in 1906 and 1908, making it one of the most successful sports in the University's early years. Its success also seemed to rub off on other teams. In 1906, track won its first conference title, and in 1908 the swimming and basketball teams won a conference and a national championship respectively.
The success of the 1908 basketball team was a major break through for University of Chicago sports. Led by "Art" Hoffman (PhB 1910) and "Long John" (John J.) Schommer (SB 1909), who was also the star centerfielder on the baseball team, the Maroons won the national championship in basketball again in 1909 and 1910. Although the hoopsters never attracted as many spectators as football, their success put basketball in the limelight as a major sport on campus.
The University of Chicago's swift ascent in the sports world included some outstanding individual feats. At the 1906 Athens Olympic Games, University of Chicago track star James Lightbody (PhB 1912) won the gold in the 1500 meters and the silver in the 800 meters, and H. M. Friend (PhB 1906, JD 1908) brought home a bronze medal in the broad jump. Maroon teams continued to excel, if not dominate, in the mid-1920s, and fencing, water polo, and tennis won a trio of titles in the 1939-40 season, only to be overshadowed by the biggest sports news of the year, the termination of football.
After football was dropped, other sports continued to compete in the Big 10 conference but, for reasons directly attributable to football's demise, with rapidly diminishing success. Since the beginning, many football players had spent the winter and spring competing in other sports. This provided sports like track, baseball, and basketball with highly skilled athletes. After 1939 this talent pool was gone.