Development of the Modern Cornell Intramural Program
Twenty years after Cornell University opened its doors in 1868, the concept of intramural sports had entered university operations but was not developed extensively. No general facilities existed for Cornell students not competing within the intercollegiate program. [1] : 299 Traditionally, Cornell's Department of Physical Education would become the advocate for intramurals and a private organization—the Cornell Athletic Association—would advance intercollegiate competition. By 1934, the two organizations with conflicting priorities would exhibit intermittent hostility toward one another. [1] : 505
While some recreation was present at Cornell from its early years in the form of canoeing and gorge hiking, the advent of formal intramurals only began in 1905 when Charles Van Patten "Tar" Young arrived to serve as assistant coach of the varsity football team. Inter-class games had been scheduled and played over the previous generation. The Cornell fraternities also established, for instance, their own baseball league in the 1890s. President Jacob Gould Schurman made individual physical fitness a priority after the turn of the century. The Cornell alumni responded with funds to create the fifty-acre Alumni Fields, upper and lower for intramural play. By 1911, Schurman reported that 75% of Cornell men were participating in regular exercise. [1] : 414 "Tar" became a forceful advocate for individual-based athletics as a recreation, a break from scholarly studies. He pushed golf, tennis, swimming, skiing, canoeing, and horseshoes. His influence helped provide facilities for those sports at Cornell. Young, who graduated in 1899 as one of Cornell's greatest athletes, maintained a deep interest in intercollegiate and intramural athletics until his death in 1960. He mustered as varsity football's quarterback on the gridiron, and pitched for the Diamondmen. He played major league baseball for one year as a pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics.
"Tar" Young was instrumental in raising money and creating Upper and Lower Alumni Fields as a permanent home for Cornell intramurals (though they are now home to the life sciences facilities and varsity practice fields), the Balch Hall athletic fields for women (which are gone, used to build Cornell North Campus), and the ski slope named in his honor in the Caroline Hills eleven miles east of Ithaca (now abandoned). He had much to do with the construction of the old intramural boathouse on the west shore of the Inlet (which also has been let go). The Outing Club he founded has modern successors. The Mount Pleasant Lodge was also built under his auspices but was not replaced after it fell into decay in the 1960s and burned down in 1968. For many years he maintained his office in the Old Armory (now the site of Carpenter Hall) and conducted roller skating sessions in the gymnasium. [4] By 1929 and the issuing of the Carnegie Foundation's inquiry into college athletics, the Cornell intramural sports program was singled out as 'exceptional' along with ten other university programs. [1] : 503
The collapse of Cornell's intercollegiate athletics program in the 1930s led to campus-wide introspection regarding the heights fallen from since the early 1920s. Sensing opportunities were broader than the Cornell alumni-led discussion was offering, Cornell President Livingston Farrand requested that Professor Frederick G. Marcham draw up a plan for a rejuvenation of both the intercollegiate and intramural athletic system at Cornell. Marcham had chaired the faculty committee reviewing athletics, and had placed intramurals at the forefront of the debate. He sought to raise their prominence. Aiding the university with athletics in general were professors C.V.P. Young, physical education, and Hermann Diederichs, engineering. The Marcham Committee included professors Horace Whiteside, law and a former football player of renown at Michigan; H.E. Baxter, architecture; and Marcham. The report was critical of the existing program and graduate manager Romeyn Berry in particular. After Farrand read the report, he asked for a plan from Marcham. Significantly, the plan detailed the extensive need for facilities, but intramural rather than intercollegiate.
The resulting Trustee decisions led to the creation, for the first time, of athletic facilities for the Cornell students in general and not as an afterthought when building facilities for the intercollegiate teams. Howard B. Ortner, class of 1919, was placed in charge of intramurals. [1] : 506 Walter C. Teagle offered $1.5 million in 1939 to build what would become Teagle Hall. Unfortunately, members of the Cornell faculty interceded to divert the money to academic facilities. The hall would be erected, but it would take fifteen more years. [5]
A comprehensive intramural plan was adopted and Coach Nicholas Bawlf was appointed supervisor of intramural sports. Every new student was required to fill out a questionnaire indicating their athletic preference. [1] : 299 This initiative produced the largest collegiate intramural program in the country. Cornell mustered about 6,000 students in 1937, including 2,500 who were not members of Cornell's sixty fraternities. This movement peaked with a report to the Cornell Board of Trustees noting that University policy, with respect to intramurals, was that "intramural sports and physical education and recreation are a pleasant way to good health and that good health is a vital factor in personal happiness and success." [6] In approving the report, the Board noted that "[i]t is not too much to say that if the program described above were carried out, the recreational and social life of Cornell University would be revolutionized. More individual students would acquire the habit of taking part in recreation, more class, fraternity and residential hall teams and leagues would be created, and coeducational recreation would establish itself. Within the limits of the University Campus the whole student body would find vital new centers of interest and activity. [1] The Cornell intramural program was seen as a means of transforming undergraduate life.
The Cornell intramural program following 1927 was exceptional. Professor C.V.P. Young and coach Nick Bawlf, soccer and hockey, provided leadership. As Professor Morris Bishop, romance languages, described the system:
The play spirit reigned. Fraternities, clubs, informal groupings of all sorts, struggled, however inexpertly, in a dozen sports. One could no longer assert that college sports were for the few, while the many sat semisupine in the stands. The complaint was rather that the student body was exercising itself instead of sitting semisupine in the stands. In 1927, the coaches were incensed to discover many freshmen were signing up for club and intramural teams, and all too few for freshman football, track and crew.
The resulting system was so successful, it engendered backlash from the Cornell intercollegiate establishment. Coach John F. Moakley stated that, "[f]raternities take this intramural competition so seriously that irrespective of the fact that a student may possess ability to win a major letter, they use him in these intramural competitions. To win points in collegiate track competition, one cannot take time off from track for these house competitions and be of service to track that he is capable of. Alumni should advice their freshmen friends who have distinguished themselves at school in track to stick to this sport if they hope to make a freshmen or a varsity team. Intramural athletics should be for the boy who doesn't exercise and not the experienced athlete. The latter is needed to represent Cornell in intercollegiate competition." [7]
In 1927–28, for instance, an astounding 3,945 students were engaged in intramural sports such as soccer, touch football, basketball, tennis, hockey, and softball. With only the Old Armory to serve as a court, intramural basketball alone mustered 600 students – which was about 10% of the students at Cornell – playing on 59 teams spread across 12 leagues. Play was diverse. The university championship in soccer came down to a play-off between the Chinese Students' Association and the Cosmopolitan Club. Even religious clubs sported teams, including Hillel, the Cardinal Newman Club, and Methodist and Baptist organizations. Buses took skiers to the Caroline hills for competition. Ten years later, there were 24 golf teams, 34 four-oared crews, 79 softball teams, a handball league and a horseshoe pitching league. [1] : 510 By 1933, the university champion of the Cornell intramural football season was playing the same from Colgate University in a Central New York championship game at Schoellkopf Stadium. [1]
