Special to The NCAA News

"[S]occer will make steady progress and become more and more a factor in college sport ... The future of the game depends very much on the action of the schools and minor colleges the next few years ..."

-- Spalding's Athletic Library, 1907

When C.C. (Christy) Morris scored a second-half goal to propel Haverford College to a 1-0 men's soccer decision at Harvard April 1, 1905, the outcome was neither an upset nor an April Fool's escapade, but rather a landmark event in the history of college athletics. And from Morris' second game-winner against the Crimson two weeks later in suburban Philadelphia all the way to North Carolina's NCAA Division I Women's Championship last December, college soccer has made the "steady progress" and become the "factor in college sport" that its founders had hoped for at the turn of the last century.

Haverford College will celebrate the first 100 years of intercollegiate play and analyze the "future of the game" when it hosts a weekend of academic panels, guest speakers, and soccer games (of course) October 22-23.

Athletics historians pinpoint the first football contest between two U.S. colleges as a 25-a-side game played by Princeton at Rutgers November 6, 1869. That kicked-ball event, played under rules that combined elements of what we now call soccer and rugby, came off when Princeton captain William Stryker Gummere accepted the challenge of his opposite number at Rutgers, William Leggett. Over the next three decades, though, as American football morphed into Walter Camp's inspired scrimmage game, its ancient forebear "soccer," whose name derived from its mostly hands-free rules, was relegated to intramural status, or forgotten altogether, on most college campuses.

What an astonishing coincidence then, that Richard Mott Gummere, second cousin of Princeton's initial captain, should be responsible for reviving college soccer -- first at Haverford, then at Harvard -- and bringing those institutions together for the first modern intercollegiate soccer game.

The early years

In the winter of 1901-02, captain Gummere and professor Wilfred Pirt Mustard were driving forces as Haverford (a cricket-playing college throughout its history) became a charter member of the Associated Cricket Clubs Association Foot Ball League of Philadelphia. The Fords soon won the Manheim Cup as soccer champions of the Cricket League, which continues operations to this day and proudly advertises itself as the nation's oldest amateur soccer confab.

The historic intercollegiate match on April 1, 1905, happened through the auspices of Harvard Ph.D. candidate Gummere, who had organized a team in Cambridge in the fall of 1904. After home-and-away losses to his undergraduate alma mater in April, Gummere, who would one day serve as Harvard's dean of admissions, led his future employer to its first collegiate soccer victory over Columbia in May. By the following spring, an Intercollegiate Association Foot Ball League (IAFL) had been formed, with Cornell and Pennsylvania (captained by Haverford alumnus and Penn medical student Harold H. Morris, Christy's brother) joining the original three teams.

Columbia and Penn faced initial opposition from proponents of American football, who feared that soccer was being foisted as a substitute for the gridiron game -- under such intense scrutiny at the time that a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) would soon be established to oversee it. Cornell was able to organize soccer in the fall of 1905, thanks to large numbers of English, Dutch and South African students in Ithaca, New York.

Penn's program grew quickly, as there were not only several good English players at the university but a number of men who had played on Cricket League elevens. A year after playing games against Harvard and Springfield, Yale joined the Association in 1907-08. Princeton, which had adopted the sport early on, held off from joining the IAFL until 1914, the year intercollegiate play moved from late winter and spring to the fall season, thus avoiding cold, muddy playing conditions and the rising popularity of basketball.

Regional powers, national champions

Stanford and California gave college soccer Western outposts in 1910-11 that were joined much later by a conference that included teams from San Francisco and UCLA. Franklin & Marshall, Penn State and Midwestern schools such as Emporia State and St. Olaf also began play in 1911, but few small colleges could sustain their programs.

A second league of Pennsylvania colleges did arise, however, seeking merger with the IAFL and eventually getting it upon formation of the new Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association of America (ISFAA) in 1926. Finally free to challenge the old powers, Penn State became a scourge, earning shares of eight of ISFAA national championships between 1926 and 1940 to surpass the seven IAFL titles by Haverford from 1905 to 1917. Penn, meanwhile, combined for 10 crowns, six IAFL and four ISFAA, between 1914 and 1933. Another circuit, the New England Intercollegiate Soccer League, began in 1934 and was home to successful programs such as Amherst and Springfield.

"There wasn't a great deal of growth in college soccer after World War I, which knocked a lot of clubs out of action," said National Soccer Coaches Association of America historian Mickey Cochrane. "So while the 1920s were the 'Golden Age of Sport,' many colleges didn't recover until after World War II."

Cochrane, who played on great teams at Oberlin in the late 1940s and started his head coaching career at Johns Hopkins in 1953, witnessed an explosion in sponsorship, with new leagues appearing in the previously soccer-deprived Midwest and South.

"It just blossomed after World War II -- that was where we really took off," he said. "The huge number of vets coming back with soccer experience made an incredible difference."

Another major development in the growth of the sport came on New Year's Day in 1950 when Penn State and San Francisco, both undefeated and untied during the 1949 season, played to a 2-2 standoff in the first "Soccer Bowl" championship game in St. Louis. That showdown, plus Penn State's 3-1 win over Purdue in December 1950, and Temple's 2-0 win at San Francisco in February 1952, convinced many observers that a National Collegiate championship was in order.

After seven more seasons of poll-selected national champions, Saint Louis, fed by strong youth and scholastic soccer traditions in that region, but playing in its inaugural varsity season, won the first official NCAA championship, 5-2, over Bridgeport at Storrs, Connecticut, on Thanksgiving Saturday, 1959. The Billikens continued their dominance over the next 15 years, appearing in all but three of 16 NCAA finals between 1959 and 1974, and ending the Northeastern schools' stranglehold on supremacy during college soccer's first half-century. NCAA championships for Division II and Division III men were added in 1972 and 1974, respectively, with Seattle Pacific and North Carolina-Greensboro, each with five titles, boasting the record for most championships in those divisions.

Women's soccer growth

Women's colleges played intramural soccer and conducted intercollegiate "play days" as early as the 1920s. Shawn Ladda, associate professor and chair of the department of physical education and human performance at Manhattan, noted in an article she wrote in 2000 that Smith College had played soccer at the inter-house, inter-class or intramural level since at least 1924. Bryn Mawr, a sibling of all-male Haverford and one of Smith's "Seven Sisters" peer colleges, also tried soccer in those years, but it became a beacon of field hockey instead. Ladda also found that three Vermont institutions -- Castleton State, Johnson and Lyndon State Colleges -- were competing against each other by the 1950s, influenced by Canadian universities such as Bishop's, McDonald and McGill. Johnson State awarded letters to its teams, and former Castleton State director of athletics Richard Terry claims that the women's team there became the first varsity program in the U.S in 1965 or 1966.

As Title IX brought the rights of women in athletics into greater focus during the 1970s, Smith defeated Brown University, 4-3, in the first match between recognized varsity teams October 10, 1976. Brown hosted an eight-team regional championship, and the concept of varsity soccer for women spread from New England. Cortland State won the first national AIAW tournament at Colorado College in 1980, then the North Carolina Tar Heels proceeded to win the last AIAW title and, starting in 1982, 17 NCAA Division I championships in the next 22 years. In Divisions II and III, Franklin Pierce and UC San Diego, both with five championships since the inception of their respective championships, are tops among title teams in those divisions. The Tritons also won Division II championships in 2000 and 2001 after moving from Division III.

From its beginnings in the 1904-05 academic year to the thousands of games that will be played in the current season, college soccer has become a ubiquitous feature on college campuses, easily ranking among the most-sponsored sports. The game is played by men at more than 700 four-year U.S. colleges and by women at nearly 800 institutions -- the latter figure nearly unfathomable considering that varsity soccer for women was virtually unknown a quarter century ago. But as the Spalding Guide predicted in 1907, soccer has "become more and more a factor in college sport," with its future ensured by the "action of schools and minor colleges" that realized the potential of the game first played by Haverford College.

John Douglas is an associate athletics director and the sports information director at Haverford College. 

Haverford's centennial celebration honors past and present contributors

Focusing not only on its oldest-in-the-nation men's program and its inaugural win over Harvard in 1905, Haverford will celebrate the last century of intercollegiate soccer Friday, October 22, with a historical panel featuring several prominent authors, plus keynote addresses that evening by former collegiate Players of the Year and USA National Team members Alexi Lalas and Shannon MacMillan.

Lalas, a Detroit native and the 1991 Hermann Trophy/Missouri Athletic Club Award winner as the nation's top collegian, was all-region for Rutgers all four years, and led the Scarlet Knights to the 1989 NCAA semifinals and to a scoreless, penalty-kick loss to UCLA in the 1990 final. He has a reputation as the most recognizable U.S. soccer player in the world, thanks in part to his trademark red goatee and his legacy as the first American to play in Italy's Serie A first division.

An two-time Olympian (1992 and 1996) who played every minute of every U.S. match at the 1994 FIFA World Cup, Lalas became a stalwart for four Major League Soccer teams, and the first MLS player to rise to be a general manager with the San Jose Earthquakes in 2004. He also is known for his network television commentary and his exploits in music as a rock guitarist, singer and producer with his band, "The Gypsies."

MacMillan, a three-time first-team all-American, Hermann Trophy/Missouri Athletic Club Award winner, and Soccer America national Player of the Year in 1995, recorded 87 goals and 45 assists in her college career. She led Portland to the NCAA quarterfinals, semifinals and finals in 1993, 1994 and 1995, respectively. MacMillan was the leading freshman scorer in the nation in 1992 and led Division I in scoring with 23 goals and 12 assists in 21 games as a sophomore. She has appeared twice for the U.S. in the FIFA Women's World Cup (1999 and 2003) and was a gold medal winner for the U.S. in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Friday afternoon's history showcase will include Franklin Foer, staff writer at The New Republic and author of "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization;" Jere Longman, New York Times sportswriter and author of "The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women's Soccer Team, and How It Changed the World;" Alex Kitroeff, Haverford history professor and author of "Wrestling with the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics;" and Les Poolman, director of athletics and former men's soccer coach at Dickinson. Ex-Haverford soccer captain and current Washington Post reporter Chris Lee will moderate the panel, while his former Fords teammate Dan Segal, who represents many of the top professional soccer players in the U.S., will introduce Lalas and MacMillan.

On Saturday, October 23, Haverford will celebrate its past with games against Centennial Conference rivals Gettysburg (women) and Dickinson (men), as well as a reunion to honor contributions of several generations of soccer alumni at the college.