Formation | 15 March 1887 |
---|---|
Founder | Robert F. Clark |
Legal status | Non-profit (501c3) |
Headquarters | 185 Dartmouth Street, Boston, MA 02116 |
Location | |
Leader | Joann Flaminio (2011 - Present) |
Website | www |
The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) is a non-profit, running-focused, organized sports association for the Greater Boston area. The B.A.A. hosts such events as the Boston Marathon, the B.A.A. 5K, the B.A.A. 10K, the B.A.A. Half Marathon, the B.A.A. Distance Medley (comprising the 5k, 10K, and half marathon events), and the B.A.A. Invitational Mile.
The mission of the B.A.A. to promote a healthy lifestyle through sports, especially running.
Among the nation's oldest athletic clubs, the Boston Athletic Association was established on March 15, 1887 under its first president, Robert F. Clark, and with the support of George Walker Weld and other leading sports enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and politicians of the day.
According to Article II of its 1890 Yearbook Constitution, their objective was to "encourage all manly sports and promote physical culture." The B.A.A. clubhouse on the corner of Exeter and Boylston Streets in Boston's Back Bay was completed in 1888, on the present-day site of the 1970s-era expansion of the Boston Public Library. In addition to such facilities as a gymnasium, bowling alley, billiard hall, Turkish baths and tennis courts, the Association also owned a shooting range and a country club.
Among the active sports of the day were boxing, fencing, water polo and athletics. The club held its first organized track and field competition in 1890 and in 1897 the first famed Boston Marathon took place. A unicorn was chosen as the Association's symbol and appears on the Boston Marathon medals to this day.
The B.A.A. ice hockey team won the United States Amateur Hockey Association championship in the 1922–23 season. [1] Previously, the B.A.A. ice hockey team had played in the American Amateur Hockey League.
The B.A.A. lost nearly 1,000 of its 1,600 members during the Great Depression. In 1935, the organization filed a petition of reorganization under Section 77B of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. [2] The B.A.A. closed its clubhouse on August 4, 1935 and the building's furnishings were sold at auction later that year. [3] [4] The building was purchased by Boston University. The school planned to turn the clubhouse, renamed the Soden Building, into a modern gymnasium, but a city ordnance prevented BU from building a hall with a capacity of over 300 people in this type of building. It was instead remodeled and housed classrooms. [5] The building continued to be the headquarters of the Boston Marathon for two decades and was torn down in 1959. [6]
Shortly after the B.A.A. went bankrupt, a number of its members created the Unicorn Club to continue the association's indoor games and the Boston Marathon. On January 3, 1936, the Unicorn Club merged with the old B.A.A. to form a new Boston Athletic Association. Unicorn Club president Clarence A. Barnes was elected president of the revived B.A.A. [7]
Walter A. Brown was elected president of the Boston Athletic Association in 1940 and continued until his death in 1964. [8] [9] During this time, the B.A.A. was a commercial enterprise of the Boston Garden, which hosted the association's annual indoor meet. [10] For many years, the B.A.A. Games, not the Boston Marathon, was the association's premier event. It attracted top athletes, including Cornelius Warmerdam, Wes Santee, and Ron Delany. However, as the years went on, attendance declined (dropping from 13,645 in 1960 to 9,008 in 1971) and overhead costs increased, making the meet unprofitable. In 1971, the decision was made to end the BAA meet. [11]
In 1951, during the height of the Korean War, Brown denied Koreans entry into the Boston Marathon. He stated: "While American soldiers are fighting and dying in Korea, every Korean should be fighting to protect his country instead of training for marathons. As long as the war continues there, we positively will not accept Korean entries for our race on April 19." [12]
Brown was succeeded by Will Cloney, who was president from 1964 to 1982. [13]
With the Boston Garden no longer involved with the B.A.A, a new board of directors was formed in 1977. [10] The B.A.A.'s current headquarters is at 185 Dartmouth Street. In 1986, John Hancock Financial Services, Inc. assumed major sponsorship of the Boston Marathon, an affiliation that helped not just the marathon, but also in its year-round community programming until the 2023 marathon, when Manulife's contract was allowed to expire.
The B.A.A. maintains an active running club, organizes the B.A.A. 5K on the weekend of the Boston Marathon, The B.A.A. 10K in June, the B.A.A. Half Marathon in October, and the Mayor's Cup cross country races in Franklin Park in October. The B.A.A. successfully bid to host the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials Women's Marathon, which was run on the Sunday before the 2008 Boston Marathon.
In January 2016, the B.A.A. purchased an office building just yards from the starting line of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. The office building will be used by the association for the registration of runners and services for various B.A.A. events. [14]
In March 2023, Bank of America took over sponsorship of the Boston Marathon.
The B.A.A. also organizes an annual relay race for Boston-area middle school and high-school-aged runners that takes place on Clarendon Street in Boston. [15]
The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon race hosted by several cities and towns in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is traditionally held on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, the event was inspired by the success of the first marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's best-known road racing events. It is one of six World Marathon Majors. Its course runs from Hopkinton in southern Middlesex County to Copley Square in Boston.
Hopkinton is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, 25 miles (40 km) west of Boston. The town is best known as the starting point of the Boston Marathon, held annually on Patriots' Day each April, and as the headquarters for the Dell EMC corporation.
Walter Augustine Brown was the founder and original owner of the Boston Celtics, as well as an important figure in the development of ice hockey in the United States.
Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets was the name of three separate ice hockey teams based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The original team was part of the United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA) from 1920 to 1925 and developed from predecessors dating back to 1915. After winning the USAHA Championship in 1924 and 1925, the ostensibly amateur Yellow Jackets turned fully professional and became the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National Hockey League. After the Pirates relocated in 1930 to play as the Philadelphia Quakers, a second Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets club played for two seasons in the International Hockey League, a minor professional circuit. A third Yellow Jackets team was organized at the amateur level in 1935 by John H. Harris and competed in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League before folding in 1937.
Jon Willis ("Jack") Fultz is a retired American long-distance runner, who came to prominence in the 1970s after winning the 1976 Boston Marathon, the world's oldest and most established marathon race.
John Adelbert Kelley was an American long-distance runner who twice represented his native country at the Summer Olympics, in 1936 and 1948, and competed in the Boston Marathon over 50 times, winning in 1935 and 1945. He was often dubbed "Kelley the Elder" to avoid confusion with John J. Kelley, winner of the 1957 Boston Marathon; the two men were not related.
George Vincent Brown of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, was an American sports official. He championed the development of various sports and sporting events in the United States, most notably the Boston Marathon and amateur ice hockey. From 1904 to 1936, Brown served the United States Olympic Team as a manager, official, and coach. In 1919, he became general manager of the Boston Arena, home to indoor track meets, boxing matches, and hockey games, among other events.
Roberta Louise Gibb is an American former runner who was the first woman to have run the entire Boston Marathon (1966). She is recognized by the Boston Athletic Association as the pre-sanctioned era women's winner in 1966, 1967, and 1968. At the Boston Marathon, the pre-sanctioned era comprised the years from 1966 through 1971, when women, who under AAU rules could not compete in the Men's Division, ran and finished the race. In 1996 the B.A.A. retroactively recognized as champions the women who finished first in the Pioneer Women's Division Marathon for the years 1966–1971.
Choi Yun-chil was a South Korean long-distance runner who was a two-time Olympian and a two-time national champion in the marathon.
Samuel Alexander Mellor Jr. was an American long-distance runner who won the 1902 Boston Marathon and competed in the marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri.
The United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA) was an ice hockey governing body in the United States from 1920 to 1925, which operated at an amateur level. The league was filled with predominantly Canadian-born players, but struggled to achieve consistent attendance figures in the days before large arenas with artificial ice. The association disbanded in 1925, with some teams eventually joining the American Hockey Association, and one team joining the National Hockey League.
John Duncan Semple was a Scottish-American runner, physical therapist, trainer, and sports official. In 1967, he attained worldwide notoriety as a race official for the Boston Marathon, when he repeatedly assaulted 20 year old marathon runner Kathrine Switzer and knocked down her coach when he tried to protect her. Switzer was officially entered in the race in accordance with the Boston Marathon's rule book which at that time made no mention of sex. Semple subsequently claimed that amateur rules banned women racing for more than 1.5 miles (2.4 km). He subsequently oversaw implementation of qualifying times in 1970 and, in response to lobbying and rule changes by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the implementation of a separate women's race in 1972.
Shigeki Tanaka was a Japanese long-distance runner who won the 1951 Boston Marathon.
Thomas J. Kanaly was an American sports executive with the Boston Athletic Association and the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation.
Henry G. Lapham was an American investment banker, oilman, philatelist, philanthropist, and sportsman. He was the founding president of the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation and a major sports promoter in Boston during the 1920s and 1930s.
The 2018 Boston Marathon was the 122nd running of the Boston Athletic Association's Boston Marathon. It took place on Monday, April 16, 2018. The race was held in unusually cold weather at 39 °F (4 °C) with rain. Yuki Kawauchi won the men's foot race in 2:15:58 and Desiree Linden won the women's foot race in 2:39:54. The previous year's times were 2:09:37 and 2:21:52, respectively, reflecting the difficult running conditions this year. Wheelchair winners were Marcel Hug, 1:46:26, and Tatyana McFadden, 2:04:39.
John Leonard Powers is a journalist and author who wrote for The Boston Globe for more than four decades in the Sports, Metro, Sunday Magazine, and Living sections and later became a freelance correspondent for the newspaper. Many sportswriters consider him the dean of Olympic journalists; he has covered every Olympic Games since 1976, excepting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, when the U.S. boycott led the Russians to refuse to issue a visa. He may well have reported from more Olympics than any other American sportswriter. Powers was an integral part of a highly regarded sportswriting team at the Globe. “From the mid-1970s to the early '80s,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 2009, “the Globe contained arguably the greatest collection of reporting talent ever assembled in a sports section…” He has also written or co-authored 11 books.
The 2021 Boston Marathon was the 125th official running of the annual marathon race held in Boston, Massachusetts, and 123rd time it was run on course. It took place on October 11, 2021.
Clark Hodder was an American athlete, coach, and administrator who won the Massachusetts State Amateur Championship and played and coached hockey at Harvard College.
William Thomas Cloney was an American athletics administrator who was the race director of the Boston Marathon from 1946 to 1982 and president of the Boston Athletic Association from 1964 to 1982.