Description:

Yale University - Yale University incredibly rare mammoth track team photo, circa 1903.

Incredibly mammoth gelatin silver print photograph of Yale University men's outdoor track and field team, circa 1903, measuring 22.5" x 30.75". Matte surface mounted on board in very good condition, with expected minor damage to edges including 1" long tear at bottom left and .5" long tear at top center. Silvered background partially visible along both left and right edges. Water stains visible both recto and verso along right edge.

Forty-four varsity and junior varsity team members dressed in black tanks and white shorts are depicted standing and seated in four rows. All members sport white "Y" letters on their tops, and some wear award medals. Two members at center wield enormous trophy cups, one partly inscribed "Graduates of Harvard and Yale, May 1900". Five members in the front row hold silk flags in their laps, two flags commemorating team milestones, such as a prize awarded for the 1 Mile Relay Race at the Annual Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletics in America recently held in New York City, and one inscribed with the name of their alma mater. Team members are posed in a photographic studio, complete with unfurled sheets of fake turf rolled out in the foreground.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, New Haven's Yale University engaged in a bitter rivalry with other Ivy League institutions like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. Since the inception of the college athletic league in 1876, Harvard proved a worthy adversary. Yet the Bull Dogs wrested the championship away first in 1887, and then in 1889, and between 1893 and 1896. The track and field stars in our photograph were at the peak of their club's prowess; Yale won the championships three years in a row between 1902 and 1904. After this point and until the league's dissolution in 1920, Yale would never win the title again.

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