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Contact: Kerry Kahl, Sports Information Director - Cornell College, kkahl@cornellcollege.edu 

MOUNT VERNON, Iowa — Cornell College’s athletics history began nearly 150 years ago with an 1876 baseball game against State University of Iowa that Cornell won 35-18. Cornell played its first football game in 1891 – an 82-0 blitz of Coe College – which started a long-standing rivalry that remains strong today.
 
Cornell was a charter member of the Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference, formed in 1921. Cornell captured the team title at the conference’s first athletics competition – the men’s track & field championships – held on May 13, 1921. That began a haul of great success for Cornell’s sports programs, which had claimed 126 team championships as a Midwest Conference member through the 2019-20 season.  
 
Cornell has been an NCAA Division III member since the division was created in 1973. By 1995, Cornell offered 19 intercollegiate sports. The men’s and women’s golf programs were dropped in 2011-12, although men’s and women’s lacrosse were added as varsity sports in Spring of 2015, bringing the current day total back to 19.
 
Cornell also previously sponsored swimming and had a pool in what is today’s wrestling room. The men’s swimming program enjoying a run of four conference titles in the 1960s.  
 
The wrestling program has long been a staple of Cornell athletics, winning 42 conference team championships from 1938-96. The acclaimed 1947 Dream Team won both NCAA and AAU national championships, the smallest school and only private college ever to achieve that feat.
 
Cornell athletes participated in every Olympic Games from 1924 to 1964. Eight Cornellians were members of Olympic wrestling teams. Cornell has crowned nine individual national champions and placed in the Top 10 at the NCAA Championships 12 times.
 
Men’s basketball was Cornell’s first team sport to advance to the NCAA Tournament, placing fourth in 1960. The 1979-80 women’s basketball team went 18-8 and won the conference title, tying an NCAA record for best turnaround after going 0-17 the previous season.
 
The Midwest Athletic Conference for Women was established in 1979, around the time Cornell’s women began competing in intercollegiate sports. Hall of Fame coach, administrator and professor Ellen Whale helped pioneer the movement for gender equity on the Hilltop. Whale was named volleyball coach in 1978, went on to coach numerous sports, and became Cornell’s Director of Athletics for both men’s and women’s athletics in 1989.
 
Women’s sports have been very competitive over the past two decades, claiming 17 of Cornell’s last 21 conference team championships. 
 
In 1992, Cornell’s football team posted an undefeated 10-0 season and rolled to a 40-14 victory over Beloit in the MWC championship game. It’s among 12 conference football titles for the Rams.    
   
In 1997, Cornell withdrew from the Midwest Conference and joined the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC). Women’s tennis became the first team to win an IIAC championship in 2001.
 
Cornell moved back into the Midwest Conference for the 2012-13 season. Since rejoining, the Rams have collected team championships in six different conference sports. Volleyball has dominated its MWC foes with a run of eight consecutive regular-season titles through 2019. Coach Jeff Meeker’s volleyball program has qualified for the NCAA Tournament seven times since 2011.  
 
Cornell has hosted the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championships six times since 2008. Women’s basketball hosted an NCAA Regional Tournament before a packed gym in 2013, coming up one point short of reaching the Sweet 16.
  Back in the 19th century, the college’s “gymnasium” was simply the “great outdoors” and not practical for use during Iowa’s long, cold winters. In 1873, Cornell’s athletic teams were provided rooms and appliances for physical training in the basement of College Hall. The men of Cornell built their own gym – 24 by 40 feet – in 1889. The building burned down two years later, and finally in 1909 Cornell celebrated the opening of Alumni Gymnasium (now McWethy Hall for the art department).
 
Cornell’s Field House was erected in 1953. The current Richard and Norma Small Sport Center opened in 1986 as one of the region’s premier indoor competition venues, featuring a six-lane track, four courts for basketball, tennis and volleyball, four racquetball courts and practice space for other activities.
 
Facility upgrades have been made to all of Cornell’s outdoor athletic venues over the past decade. A major renovation and expansion to the Small Sport Center will begin in 2021.
   
Of all Cornell’s athletic rivals, none compare to its Linn County neighbor in Cedar Rapids – Coe College.
 
The Cornell-Coe series is well known as the oldest college football rivalry west of the Mississippi River. The first meeting in 1891 was played in a cow pasture with a creek running along the 50-yard line. The 129th game between the schools was played in 2019. The all-time series record is still disputed to this day, as each institution claim a victory for the game played in 1902.
 
In basketball, there’s the toilet paper tradition at Cornell home games when the Kohawks come to town. Cornell students toss rolls of paper onto the floor after the Rams’ first made basket. Cornell’s team is charged with a technical foul, although that hasn’t deterred a tradition that has lived strong for decades.  
 
Coe has been a regular opponent on Cornell’s schedules in all sports, and in 2012-13 when the schools were no longer affiliated in the same conference, the Bremner Cup was introduced to carry on the competitive spirit.
 
The all-sport traveling trophy is named after Barron Bremner, a former coach and administrator at both schools. The Bremner Cup is awarded at the end of each athletics year to the institution that scored the most cumulative points in head-to-head events.