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Tag: sports

Alumni Reunion Trivia Question: What were the original colors of Grinnell College?

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On May 28, 2026

In 2025-26

Grinnell sports teams decided to ditch their original school colors in 1891, in favor of Scarlett and Black, which was seen as more sporting/manly.

Question: What were the original school colors?

Answer: Pink and Green, as modeled by the football team (the 1889 squad is pictured on top, jaunty headware and all, while the 1890 squad is pictured below them).

Pink was actually quite popular as a school color in the 19th century. In fact, Syracuse University also sported Green and Pink as their school colors, until they abandoned them in favor of blue and orange in the 1890s, as well. Today, there are few schools with these colors, although North High School in Des Moines, still proudly wears pink and green each year. Go Polar Bears!

The Men’s Baseball team was actually the first to abandon the school colors, choosing scarlet and black uniforms for their 1891 season. Here they are pictured a couple of years later in those outfits.

 

Ice Skating at Barber Plaza

By

On January 26, 2026

In 2025-26

For most of Grinnell’s history, students interested in ice skating took to nearby frozen lakes (such as Arbor Lake in town, or beginning in the 1950s, to the newly created Rock Creek Lake, located seven miles west of the college), while hockey enthusiasts made use of a temporary rink set up each winter for intramural games. But in 1961, a Grinnell alumna and ice-skating enthusiast, Margaret Kyle Barber ’99, donated funds for a more permanent ice-skating rink on campus that would be open from October through March. Named, “Barber Plaza,” and modelled loosely on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center in New York City, this 7,000 square foot rink was constructed to the immediate north-east of the Fine Arts Building, and in fact, used that building’s air-conditioning system to maintain consistently frozen ice on the rink through a network of cooling channels embedded in the plaza’s concrete. During the warmer months—i.e. March through September—the plaza became a useful space for hosting outdoor dances, dinners, concerts, and other events*

At the opening ceremony of Barber Plaza, in January of 1962, President Howard Bowen spoke about the importance of physical exercise and education within a liberal arts college, which was a consistent theme of his presidency which saw a notable expansion in both areas. It also seems as if the 1950s and 1960s represented the peak of “winter culture” on campus, with an impressive range of outdoor activities, programming, and winter sports.

 

*Having just marked Martin Luther King day, last week, it is worth noting that Barber Plaza served as the site for a large campus gathering on Sunday, April 7th (3 days after King’s assassination in Memphis), in which hundreds gathered to mourn King’s death, to rally in support of the civil right’s movement, and to raise money for the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, TN.

The Men’s Squad, 1915

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On January 27, 2025

In 2024-25

Back row, from left to right: Meacham, Fisher (Coach), Swan | second row-Tharp, Jones, Lynch, Loper (Captain), Targgart, Norris.

Last week, we saw the women’s basketball squad, that won the interclass league in 1915.  This image shows the men’s team, which had just captured its sixth consecutive conference championship, having edged out the University of Iowa for the title, once again. From 1908 to 1915, Grinnell was on an epic winning streak, loosing only 12 (out of a 100) games, scoring 3,147 points (to their opponent’s 1,594 points), with two undefeated seasons, and 6 championship titles (besting Kansas, Illinois, Iowa State and the University of Iowa).

Note the gothic G that the basketball team wore as their emblem until the 1930s, when it was changed because students complained it was too difficult to decipher (fans could not tell if it was meant to be a G a C a B, or something else).

The 1915 Women’s Basketball Champions

By

On January 20, 2025

In 2024-25

This picture captures the victorious senior women’s basketball team after they won the 1915 inter-class series (hence the “class champs” written on the basketball). While men’s athletics revolved around intercollegiate competition, women’s sports were organized along intramural lines, and at Grinnell, that meant that each academic class would field a team that competed against other years. In 1915, the “senior women” went undefeated, winning the title and the coveted Silver Loving Cup (which had been donated by H.W. Somers that year to promote a “keen spirit of rivalry” among the teams, and add even more drama to the series). The senior team was comprised of E. Hoesley, H. MacEachron, H. Whitney, E. Dunham, I. Barhite, I. Pyle, and R. Coy.  This same team won the previous year’s championship as the junior squad in 1914.

 

Thanksgiving 1924: The “Electric Gridiron” Comes to Grinnell

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On November 25, 2024

In 2024-25, Uncategorized

On Thanksgiving Day—100 years ago—many of the Grinnell students who remained on campus gathered in the auditorium of A.R.H to “watch” their football team play the last game of the season against their rival, Creighton, in Omaha. The college marching band assembled in the auditorium, along with Grinnell’s cheerleading squad, but all eyes were on the new “Grid-Graph” machine, which weighed nearly 1,000 pounds, and was designed to visualize remote football matches via instant telegraphy, electrical switches, and lights, so that fans could follow the action in real time, play-by-play (in an era before television coverage, and when even radio broadcasting of games was limited to a few nationally chosen matches). In the 1920s, Grid-Graph became all the rage in college sports, and Grinnell was excited to sign its own contract in 1924 to bring the marvels of modern technology (the “electric gridiron”) to campus.

Photograph of a Grid-Graph “in action” in the 1920s

Grinnellians posing before the Thanksgiving match in 1924 (note: the player on the far right is Hap Moran, who went on to a successful career as a starter in the NFL for more than a decade)

Grinnell Gold at the Paris Olympics, July 8, 1924

By

On July 8, 2024

In 2023-24

Morgan winning Gold F. Morgan Taylor was one of Grinnell’s most decorated athletes of the 20th century. In the summer of 1924, while a student at Grinnell, Taylor won the U.S. Olympic trials for the 440-yard hurdle, setting a world record time of 52.6 seconds in the process (because a hurdle was knocked down, it did not count as an official world record). At the Paris games, Morgan again came in under 53 seconds, winning a gold medal (pictured here). In all, Morgan won four collegiate (AAU) titles, and two more Olympic bronze medals in 1928 and 1932 (loosing out to the famed British hurdler, Lord Burghley, who was fictionally immortalized in the film, Chariots of Fire). Morgan was widely respected by his colleagues and was elected as the captain of the U.S. track and field team for the 1932 Olympics (Los Angeles) as well as the official flag bearer for team U.S.A (pictured here) one of the highest honors in Olympic sports.

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