Yale Bulldogs

Yale Bulldogs
University	Yale University
Conference	Ivy League (primary) ECAC Hockey Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges NEISA CSA (squash)
NCAA	Division I (FCS)
Athletic director	Victoria Chun
Location	New Haven, Connecticut
Varsity teams	35 teams
Football stadium	Yale Bowl
Basketball arena	Payne Whitney Gym
Ice hockey arena	Ingalls Rink
Baseball stadium	Yale Field
Soccer stadium	Reese Stadium
Lacrosse stadium	Reese Stadium
Sailing venue	Yale Corinthian Yacht Club
Mascot	Handsome Dan
Nickname	Bulldogs
Fight song	"Bulldog"
Colors	Yale blue and white [1]
Website	yalebulldogs.com

The Yale Bulldogs are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The school sponsors 35 varsity sports. The school has won two NCAA national championships in women's fencing, four in men's swimming and diving, 21 in men's golf, one in men's hockey, one in men's lacrosse, and 16 in sailing.

In 1970 the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale—against the wishes of the NCAA—playing its Jewish center Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5]} The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years. ^[6]

Sports

Men's sports	Women's sports
Baseball	Basketball
Basketball	Crew
Crew	Cross country
Cross country	Fencing
Fencing	Field hockey
Football	Golf
Golf	Gymnastics
Ice hockey	Ice hockey
Lacrosse	Lacrosse
Rugby (club)	Soccer
Sailing	Softball
Soccer	Squash
Squash	Swimming & diving
Swimming & diving	Tennis
Tennis	Track & field1
Track & field1	Volleyball
Co-ed sports
Sailing
1 – includes both indoor and outdoor

Men's sports

Baseball

Main article: Yale Bulldogs baseball

Craig Breslow

Major leaguers pitcher Craig Breslow (Oakland A's and Boston Red Sox) and catcher Ryan Lavarnway (Boston Red Sox/Los Angeles Dodgers), among others, played baseball for the Bulldogs. Perhaps Yale's most notable baseball player, however, was future U.S. president George H. W. Bush, who played for the Bulldogs in the late 1940s.

Breslow led the Ivy League with a 2.56 ERA in 2002. ^[7] Lavarnway led the NCAA in batting average (.467) and slugging percentage (.873) in 2007, set the Ivy League hitting-streak record (25), and through 2010 held the Ivy League record in career home runs (33). ^[8] In August 2012, Breslow and Lavarnway, playing for the Red Sox, became the first Yale grads to be Major League teammates since 1949. ^[9]

Men's basketball

Main article: Yale Bulldogs men's basketball

The men's basketball team has been named national champion on six occasions – in 1896, 1897, 1899, and 1900 by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll, which began retroactive selections with the 1895–96 season; and in 1901 and 1903 by the Helms Athletic Foundation, which began retroactive selections with the 1900–01 season. ^[10] Penn and Yale played in the First College Basketball game with 5 men on a team in 1897.

Yale has won seven Ivy League championships – 1957, 1962, 1963, 2002, 2016, 2019 and 2020. It also won the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, the forerunner to the Ivy League, eight times – 1902, 1903, 1907, 1915, 1917, 1923, 1933 and 1949.

Men's crew

See also: Harvard–Yale Regatta, Goldthwait Cup, and Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges

Football

Main article: Yale Bulldogs football

Yale team of 1876, national champions

The football team has competed since 1876. They have won nineteen national championships when the school competed in what is now known as the FBS. ^[11] They are perhaps best known for their rivalry with Harvard, known as "The Game". Twenty one former players have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

The Bulldogs were the dominant team in the early days of intercollegiate football, winning 27 college football national championships, including 26 in 38 years between 1872 and 1909. ^[12] Walter Camp, known as the "Father of Football," graduated from Hopkins Grammar School in 1876, and played college football at Yale College from 1876 to 1882. He later served as the head football coach at Yale from 1888 to 1892. ^[13] It was Camp who pioneered the fundamental transition of American football from rugby when in 1880, he succeeded in convincing the Intercollegiate Football Association to discontinue the rugby "scrum," and instead have players line up along a "line of scrimmage" for individual plays, which begin with the snap of the ball and conclude with the tackling of the ballcarrier. ^[14]

Men's golf

Robert Hunter

The Yale Men's Golf Team has won 21 collegiate team championships (all except 1943 were bestowed by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association): 1897, 1898 (spring), ^[15] 1902 (spring), 1905–13, 1915, 1924–26, 1931–33, 1936, 1943. They have crowned 13 individual champions: John Reid, Jr. (1898, spring), Charles Hitchcock, Jr. (1902, fall), Robert Abbott (1905), W. E. Clow, Jr. (1906), Ellis Knowles (1907), Robert Hunter (1910), George Stanley (1911), Nathaniel Wheeler (1913), Francis Blossom (1915), Jess Sweetser (1920), Dexter Cummings (1923, 1924), Tom Aycock (1929). Both are records. They have won 10 Ivy League championships since the League championship was started in 1975: 1984–85, 1988, 1990–91, 1996–97, 2003, 2011, 2018. ^[16] Both the Men's and Women's Golf Teams play out of the Yale Golf Course which has been ranked the best collegiate golf course in the country by Golfweek.com as well as other news outlets. ^[17]

Men's ice hockey

Main article: Yale Bulldogs men's ice hockey

The Yale Men's Ice Hockey team is the oldest existing intercollegiate hockey program, having played its first game in 1896 against Johns Hopkins (a 2–2 tie). ^[18] The team competes in the ECAC Hockey League (ECACHL); in addition the Ivy League also crowns a champion for its members that field varsity ice hockey. The Bulldogs (coached by Keith Allain) won the 2013 NCAA National Championship in Pittsburgh with a 4–0 shutout of Quinnipiac University.

Men's lacrosse

Main article: Yale Bulldogs men's lacrosse

Men's soccer

Main article: Yale Bulldogs men's soccer

Yale (white shirts) vs Harvard game in 1922

Yale's first attempts with "kicking games" have roots in the 1860s, when the University, along with Princeton, Rutgers, and Brown, started to play a form of football that resembled the Association game. ^[19] Nevertheless, after a rugby football played v Harvard in 1875, Yale dropped the association football in favor of rugby. ^{[20] [21]}

Before the NCAA began its tournament in 1959, the annual national champion was declared by the Intercollegiate Association Football League (IAFL) — from 1911 to 1926 — and then the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association (ISFA), from 1927 to 1958. From 1911 to 1958, Yale won four national championships.

Men's squash

Main article: Yale Bulldogs men's squash

Men's swimming and diving

Main article: Yale Bulldogs swimming and diving

Men's tennis

Irvin Dorfman played tennis for Yale (1947), and was later ranked No. 15 in singles in the United States in 1947, and No. 3 in doubles in the U.S. in 1948. ^{[22] [23]} In 1946 he won the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis Title. ^[24]

Richard Raskind, later known as Renée Richards, was captain of the 1954 men's team and later became a professional female tennis player. ^[25]

Women's sports

Women's basketball

Main article: Yale Bulldogs women's basketball

Women's crew

See also: Harvard–Yale Regatta and Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges

In 1976, the nineteen members of the Yale women's crew wrote "TITLE IX" on their bodies and went into athletic director Joni Barnett's office and took off their clothes, and then rower Chris Ernst read a statement about the way they were being treated. ^{[26] [27]} This protest was noted by newspapers around the world, including The New York Times . ^{[27] [26]} By 1977, a women's locker room was added to Yale's boathouse. ^[28] (Previously, there was no bathroom available for the women's crew team, so they had to wait on the bus after practice while the men showered before they could return to campus. ^[29] ) This protest was chronicled in the 1999 documentary A Hero For Daisy. ^{[28] [30]}

Women's ice hockey

Main article: Yale Bulldogs women's ice hockey

Women's soccer

The Bulldogs women's soccer team won the NCAA College Cup in 2002, 2004 and 2005. ^[31] In 2005, the team won a school record 15 games. ^[31] That year it also won the first outright team Ivy League title in Yale history. ^[31]

Former coach Rudy Meredith was indicted as part of the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, for allegedly accepting bribes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars to facilitate the admission of students to Yale as soccer players recruited to the Yale women's soccer team, despite their never having played competitive soccer. ^[32] He pled guilty. ^[32] Because he is cooperating with prosecutors, he may avoid the maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and $250,000 fines each of the charges carry, but he will have to forfeit the $850,000 in bribes he took in the scheme. ^[32]

Women's swimming and diving

Main article: Yale Bulldogs swimming and diving

Notable non-varsity sports

Rugby

Main article: Yale Rugby

First Yale team to play the rugby game, 1876

Yale Rugby was founded in 1875, making it one of the oldest rugby teams in North America. ^{[33] [34]} The date refers to the first Harvard vs Yale contest held in 1875, two years after the inaugural Princeton–Yale football contest. Harvard athlete Nathaniel Curtis challenged Yale's captain, William Arnold to a rugby-style game. ^{[35] [36]} The next season Curtis was captain. ^[37] He took one look at Walter Camp, then only 156 pounds, and told Yale captain Gene Baker "You don't mean to let that child play, do you? . . . He will get hurt." ^{[38] [39]}

Yale rugby plays college rugby in Division 1 in the Ivy Rugby Conference. Yale Rugby was founded in 1875, making it one of the oldest rugby teams in North America. ^{[40] [41]} President George W. Bush played rugby for Yale during his student days. ^[42]

Championships

NCAA team championships

Yale has 29 NCAA team national championships. ^[43]

• Men's (27)
  • Golf ^† (21): 1897, 1898, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1936, 1943
  • Ice Hockey (1): 2013
  • Lacrosse (1): 2018
  • Swimming (4): 1942, 1944, 1951, 1953
• Women's (2)
  • Fencing (2): 1984, 1985

Notable alumni

• Sada Jacobson (born 1983), Olympic fencing saber silver and bronze medalist, and 2-time NCAA champion.

† The NCAA started sponsoring the intercollegiate golf championship in 1939, but it retained the titles from the 41 championships previously conferred by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association in its records.

• see also:
  • Ivy League NCAA team championships
  • List of NCAA schools with the most NCAA Division I championships

See also

• List of NCAA schools with the most Division I national championships
• 2019 college admissions bribery scandal

References

1. "Yale Athletics Brand Guidelines" (PDF). December 1, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
2. "Cross Campus". Yale Daily News. January 15, 2009.
3. "YALE STORM CENTER QUITS BASKETBALL". The New York Times. October 9, 1970.
4. Gordon S. White Jr. (January 16, 1970). "RULING TO EXTEND TO ALL ELI SPORTS; Penalty Stems From Yale's Unwavering Stand to Use an Ineligible Player". The New York Times.
5. President's Commission on Olympic Sports (1977). The Final Report of the President's Commission on Olympic Sports, U.S. Government Printing Office.
6. "Rationale for the Student-Athletes Bill of Rights", June 25, 2002.
7. "Six Leaguers Taken in MLB Draft". Ivyleaguesports.com. June 5, 2002. Archived from the original on June 14, 2006. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
8. "Ryan Lavarnway". Yalebulldogs.com. April 6, 2007. Archived from the original on October 7, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2011.
9. "Bulldogs in Beantown". Yale Daily News. September 5, 2012. Archived from the original on October 2, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2013.
10. ESPN, ed. (2009). ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Men's Game. New York, NY: ESPN Books. p. 529. ISBN   978-0-345-51392-2.
11. "Early Football Style Championships". Archived from the original on February 11, 2010.
12. Official 2009 NCAA Division I Football Records Book (PDF). Indianapolis, IN: The National Collegiate Athletic Association. August 2009. pp. 76–81. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
13. Walter "The Father of Football" Camp at the College Football Hall of Fame
14. Parke H. Davis (1912). Football: The American Intercollegiate Game. c. Scribner's sons. p.  51.
15. "Golf Team Defeated". The Crimson. May 6, 1898. Archived from the original on May 31, 2015. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
16. "The Ivy League Men's Golf Records Book 2012–13" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on December 5, 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2013.
17. Lusk, Jason (October 19, 2020). "Golfweek's Best 2020: Top 30 Campus Courses". golfweek.com. Golfweek. Retrieved August 7, 2021.
18. Archived January 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
19. No Christian End! The Beginnings of Football in America By PFRA Research (Originally Published in The Journey to Camp: The Origins of American Football to 1889 (PFRA Books)
20. Camp and His Followers: American Football 1876–1889 By PFRA Research (archived)
21. THE BOSTON GAME article by Michael T. Geary at academia.edu
22. "Dorfman, Irv: Jews In Sports". jewsinsports.org. Archived from the original on May 25, 2011. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
23. "The Deseret News". news.google.com.au. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
24. Wechsler, Bob (May 3, 2018). Day by Day in Jewish Sports History. KTAV Publishing House, Inc. ISBN   9780881259698. Archived from the original on May 3, 2018. Retrieved May 3, 2018– via Google Books.
25. "Renée Richards | Sport | The Observer". Theguardian.com. February 13, 2011. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
26. "How a naked protest changed women's rowing forever". Sports.yahoo.com. August 13, 2016. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
27. "YALE HEARD NAKED TRUTH IN PROTEST". Hartford Courant. May 24, 1992.
28. Wulf, Steve (June 14, 2012). "ESPN The Magazine - The 1976 protest that helped define Title IX movement". Espn.com. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
29. O'Connor, Karen (August 18, 2010). Gender and Women's Leadership: A Reference Handbook. SAGE. p. 855. ISBN   978-1-4129-6083-0.
30. 40 minutes. "A Hero for Daisy - Full Frame Documentary Film Festival". Fullframefest.org. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
31. "General". Yale University.
32. "Ex-Yale soccer coach pleads guilty in admissions scandal". March 29, 2019.
33. E Digby Baltzell, "Goodbye To All That," Society 31, no. 2 (January 1994): 62-71. https://doi.org/10.1007%2FBF02693217
34. "Yale University Rugby Football Club | Ivy Rugby Conference". Ivyrugby.com. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
35. "First Harvard versus Yale Football Game Program, 1875 - lot - Sotheby's". sothebys.com.
36. "Year by Year 1875". theunbalancedline.com.
37. "Media Center: Harvard Crimson Football - All-Time Football Captains". Harvard. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
38. "Camp Curbed the Carnage". Spokane Daily Chronicle. September 8, 1962.
39. "Star-News - Google News Archive Search". google.com.
40. E Digby Baltzell, "Goodbye To All That," Society 31, no. 2 (January 1994): 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1007%2FBF02693217
41. "Yale University Rugby Football Club – Ivy Rugby Conference". ivyrugby.com. Archived from the original on July 16, 2015.
42. George W. Bush, left, playing rugby
43. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on March 20, 2014. Retrieved May 24, 2015.

External links

• Official website