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 Long
before there was the Final Four, the Bowl Championship
Series or ESPN, there was Harvard-Yale crew. Heck, before
there was the telephone, the automobile, or the even
electric light bulb, Harvard and Yale were competing against
each other on the water and soon thereafter in several other
athletic venues.
Intercollegiate athletics in America was born nearly 150
years ago when on August 3, 1852, Harvard University and
Yale University held a boat race on Lake Winnipesaukee in
Center Harbor, N.H., after Yale had issued the challenge
“to test the superiority of the oarsmen of the two
colleges.” Harvard, rowing in the Oneida, defeated two
Yale entries in a two-mile race to win an event ostensibly
held to boost tourism and travel on the Boston, Concord, and
Montreal Railroad. With it, a rivalry or, more precisely,
“The Rivalry” was born.
Less than two weeks from now -- on Saturday afternoon, June
8, on the Thames River in New London, Conn. -- Harvard and
Yale crews will meet to celebrate the 150th birthday of
college athletics (New London has hosted the race nearly
every year since 1878). Action starts at 3:15 p.m. and the
races will be rowed upstream, ending beneath the sprawling
hills of Espinoza's Farm in Bartlett's Cove. This year's
meeting will be the 137th in the series, which is led by
Harvard, 84-52, and includes a Crimson sweep of last year's
varsity, junior varsity, and freshman contests. Sports
Illustrated has called this the most venerable rivalry in
all of college sports and Yankee Magazine recently wrote a
cover story on the race.
 The
city of New London and the two schools will celebrate this
sesquicentennial anniversary with race -- day luncheons,
dinners, and alumni rows, and there are discussions to use
it as a launching pad for a yearlong series of
activities.
The H-Y race, which attracted 100,000 spectators during its
heyday with U.S. Presidents and leaders of corporate America
in attendance, is unique in that it's also the longest of
its kind in the country. The varsity crews battle for four
grueling miles, testing both strength and endurance while
taking some 700 strokes during a 20-minute marathon. Last
year, a tradition of days gone by returned as an observation
train carried some 300 fans along the shoreline to watch the
action.
But Harvard-Yale is more than rowing. The football contest
between the schools is referred to simply as "The Game" and
stands as the nation's third most-played series with 118
meetings. Yale's 809 all-time football victories are more
than any other college, while Harvard has an impressive 743
wins in its history, including a perfect 9-0 mark last fall.
This year alone, Harvard and Yale are going head-to-head in
43 athletic events spanning 31 men's and women's sports.
Aside from their lofty academic reputations, both schools
have carved their niche in the college athletics world.
Harvard boasts the nation's largest Division I program with
41 varsity sports and more than 1,500 athletes competing
annually. Harvard teams have won 116 national titles in
sports ranging from crew to football and lacrosse to squash.
Yale, with the addition of co-ed and women's sailing in
2002-03, will field 35 athletic teams with approximately
1,000 athletes, and has 100 national titles to its credit,
including several in football, swimming and diving, and
golf.
And, since these two schools were the first to start
intercollegiate athletics, it should come as no surprise
that they have been involved in several other firsts along
through the years. In 1843, Yale started the first college
boat club in America; in 1884, Yale runner Charles Sherrill
first demonstrated the four-point crouch for sprinters; in
1890, Yale introduced "cheerleaders" at a football game, a
first in college sports; in 1896, the first-ever
intercollegiate ice hockey game featured Yale and Johns
Hopkins (a 2-2 tie); and in 1897, Yale men's basketball
played the first 5-on-5 game.
Harvard has the distinction of being the nation's first
college, founded in 1636. Among its athletics first are: in
1877, the first baseball catcher's mask was used in a
Harvard game, a fencing mask adapted by inventor Fred Thayer
for Alexander Tyng; in 1896, Harvard freshman James B.
Connolly became the first gold medalist of the modern
Olympics (winning the hop, hop, and jump); in 1901, women's
field hockey was first introduced to America on the Harvard
(Radcliffe) campus; in 1903, Harvard Stadium, the nation's
oldest football Stadium, was built; in 1905, Harvard played
in the first intercollegiate soccer match against Haverford
(falling to the Pennsylvania school, 1-0); and in 1947,
Chester Pierce '48 became the first African-American
footballer to play against a white college in the South when
the Crimson met the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville.
The revered rivalry has survived two world wars (when
athletics were de-emphasized at the schools), a breakdown in
relations (in 1895-86, a result of the brutal football
contest of 1894), and an ever-changing college athletics
landscape. So, 150 years after giving birth to
intercollegiate athletics, these two are still at it ... and
still squaring off in the sport that started it all.
Harvard vs. Yale. As rivalries go, perhaps it's more Lincoln
vs. Douglas than Hatfields vs. McCoys. But, then again,
that's probably what makes it so special.
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