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- Founding - Old
Sem - Name - Women
- First Graduates -
- King Chapel - Physical
Education - May Music Festivals
- OCAAT -
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Lowell Lange, Leo Thomsen
and Richard Hauser, members of the 1947 NCAA championship
wrestling team.
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When students asked for physical education in 1873
they got military training and an officer from West Point, sent
by the alt="Tours & Maps" of the Army, to supervise the training. The logic?
College officials didn't approve of P.E. They feared it would lead
to profanity, overly emotional students and sweat.
Physical education couldn't be kept at bay forever.
Students demanded it. And in 1873 the college converted a basement
room i in College
Hall into a men's gymnasium. A pit had to be dug so the men
could use parallel bars without crashing into the low ceiling.
College officials steadfastly denied students official
sports, so students financed their own. Football started in 1875
and baseball in 1877. Cornellians played teams in neighboring towns,
including the University of Iowa in Iowa City and snuck off campus
when away games were banned. The most popular campus sport was croquet,
because both men and women could play. Cornell started playing intercollegiate
baseball in 1886, football in 1891 then track and field, basketball,
cross-country and wrestling. The first gymnasium was the great outdoors.
The Cornell Athletic Associate formed in 1888. In 1889 male students
built their own 24-by-40 foot gymnasium, which burned to the ground
in 1891.
Cornell women demanded a gymnasium and between 1888
and 1909 were allowed to use lower King
Chapel when the room wasn't in use for daily chapel services.
Ropes, rings and ladders were mounted along the walls. Floor exercises
were done on the pew seats.
In 1909 the Alumni
Gymnasium opened. In 1953 the Field House was built. Students
today have the Richard and Norma Small Life Sports
Center, opened in 1986, for team practice and fitness.
Iowa and Iowa State universities haven't always had
a monopoly on great wrestling. Cornell is the smallest and only
private college to produce Olympic wrestlers. Cornell athletes took
part in all the Olympic games between 1924 and 1964. Eight Cornellians
were members of Olympic wrestling teams and 25 Cornell men have
won individual national championships in wrestling. In 1947 Cornell
won the National Collegiate (NCAA) and the National AAU championships
in wrestling.
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