Athletic Rivalry
The five schools have been athletic rivals for almost a century now. The informal athletic rivalry was formalized in 1984 when the five colleges left the Ohio Athletic Conference to form a new league, beginning with the 1984–85 academic year. A desire for greater uniformity in academic and athletic standards was cited as the major motive for the withdrawal of these schools from the OAC. .
It was in February, 1983 that the North Coast Athletic Conference was created to "foster a complementary relationship between intercollegiate athletics and the pursuit of academic excellence". . Each league member was to have seven sports for both men and women and each school would go off campus for recruiting. It was decided that there would be no athletic scholarships.
Wooster sponsors 22 varsity sports – 11 for men and 11 for women. Both the men's and women's teams are now known as the Fighting Scots. Kenyon's nickname is Lords and Ladies, and Denison's teams are known as Big Red. Oberlin's teams are known as the Yeomen and the Ohio Wesleyan's nickname is the Battling Bishops.
Denison and Wooster share an historic rivalry in American football, which has been very closely contested. The series dates back to the Scots' first intercollegiate football game in 1889, which Wooster won 48–0. Ohio Wesleyan and Denison share the same rivalry in lacrosse.
Read more about this topic: Five Colleges Of Ohio
Famous quotes containing the words athletic and/or rivalry:
“Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness—a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)