Harvard Shoots and Scores

We live in historic times and I’m not taking about the Mayan calendar. Harvard University basketball is in the national news and since this almost never happens, I thought some history of sport, specifically Harvard athletics, might be of interest. Harvard is the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning, was established in 1636 and is considered one of America's most prestigious.  Eight U.S. presidents have degrees from Harvard, more than any other school.

Jeremy Lin at Harvard

Jeremy Lin, the Asian American basketball phenom, who played for Harvard from 2006 – 2010 is making a big splash in the NBA playing for the Knicks this season. Considering that only three other players from Harvard have ever played in the ABA or NBA, in part or mostly because they don’t offer any scholarships, it’s quite a feat. In December of last year Harvard’s men’s basketball team made the Associated Press’ Top 25 ever.  Also the Crimson will participate in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (March Madness), since their only other appearance ever in 1946.


So what is going on? I have no clue, well, maybe something about their coach who played and coached in the ACC (a real basketball league), but being interested in history I want to take a look back into the past.


Ok, those of you who know this raise your hands, what was America’s most popular team sport from the 1830’s to the 1880’s and was the event of the first intercollegiate sporting competition in the U.S.? If you guessed rowing, you would be correct. And that first event was the 1852 Harvard – Yale Boat Race. And who won, well of course, Harvard's Oneida prevailed over two Yale boats in the two-mile race. It has been held almost every year since and in the varsity race, Harvard holds a decisive 90 – 54 wins.


Harvard made a significant contribution to the game of baseball when their catcher Alexander Tyng wore the first catcher’s mask in April of 1877. The team’s manager/player Fred Thayer had been working on a mask in the off-season to help protect the catcher from the wicked tipped balls caused by the newly introduced pitch known as the curve ball.


The early days of Harvard football were its real heyday especially since the Harvard - Tufts football game of 1875 is considered by some the first modern-style American football game with11 players on each side and tackles that stopped the plays. Then in 1906 when the debate was raging about the future of football, there was some thinking to change the rules (partly for safety) and either widen the field or allow the forward pass. Harvard’s state-of-the-art concrete stadium, built in 1903 couldn’t be widened, and that fact apparently helped tip the decision in favor of the pass. The rest, as they say, is football history.

A Harvard student or maybe ex-student won the first event, the triple jump, in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.  James Connolly, who had entered the school the year before, decided he would go to Athens to participate and asked for permission to go. Although it’s not entirely clear what actually happened, it seems that Harvard’s administration refused and told him he would have to withdraw from the school. He did and never looked back. Connolly even refused the honorary doctorate Harvard offered to give him fifty-three years later. But after that inauspicious beginning, Harvard students, alums and administrators would go on to win some 100 Olympic medals in summer and winter sports, including rowing, track and field, swimming, skating, and ice hockey.


So, best enjoy the fleeting glory of Harvard hardwood victory while it lasts, and know there are plenty of fine athletes at that institution and its athletic history…, well, we wouldn’t be the same without it. Go Crimson!


Postscript: On March 15, 2012 Harvard lost their first round game in the NCAA tournament against Vanderbilt by 9 points. And by March 16 with the mid-season resignation of the Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni,  "Linsanity" was declared dead by major sports websites. How fickle are the gods of basketball.