Georgetown University Athletics

(Special thanks to the University Archives and to former Georgetown faculty member, R. Emmett Curran, A History of Georgetown University, Volumes 1-3)

EXPANSION OF INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS ON THE HILLTOP

Under the athletics-friendly leadership of University president John D. Whitney, S.J., Georgetown entered the 20th century with four intercollegiate teams, all with legitimate bragging rights within athletic circles of the eastern elite colleges.  Golf and tennis were popular sporting activities among the student population with external competition occurring on an individual basis only.  

TRACK.  Bill Foley, the preeminent track coach in America, came to Georgetown from Brown University.  He recruited and developed multiple national championship runners and world record holders on the Hilltop at the turn of the century.  Bernard Wefers ’00, joined by Olympians William Holland ’02, Ed Minahan ’03, and Arthur Duffey ‘03 were among the most talented sprinters in the world.

CREW.  Intercollegiate rowing, first established at Georgetown in 1876, enjoyed a revival in the 1899-1900 school year.  Students set up alumni-purchased rowing machines in the basement of Healy and brought in rowing alumnus and prominent rowing advocate, Claude Zappone (1878) as coach.  In their very first intercollegiate race, the Crew defeated the experienced heavyweight eight from the Naval Academy on a two-mile course.  Prior to the next season, Fr. Whitney purchased the boathouse in Georgetown from the Columbia Athletic Club.

Three years later, under coach Patrick Dempsey, Georgetown shocked the rowing world by finishing second behind Cornell at the four-mile annual Poughkeepsie regatta sponsored by the Intercollegiate Rowing Association on the Hudson River (essentially the national championship and later referred to as the I.R.A. Regatta).  The College Journal crowed that the tallest, the youngest, the lightest, the greenest crew at Poughkeepsie,” picked by the so-called experts to finish last, was the second-best crew in the nation!



The team continued to compete through the 1907 season when it lapsed because of the expense of the sport.  An attempt to revive the Crew in 1910 was short-lived, again due to prohibitive costs.  It would be another 30 years before a Georgetown intercollegiate shell would appear once again on the Potomac.  

BASEBALL.  Despite losing the coach, the star first baseman, and two of three ace starting pitchers from the 1899 national champion baseball squad, the Hilltop nine continued to thrive over the next several seasons under coach Jerome Bradley, a Princeton man like his predecessor.  From 1899 to 1902, the Georgetown baseball team had a winning percentage of .842.

FOOTBALL.  Following the death of football captain Shorty Bahen after the 1894 season due to injuries sustained in a game, intercollegiate football was discontinued for a three-year period.  When the sport returned in 1898, the Hilltoppers achieved a winning percentage of .719 over the next seven seasons under six different head coaches.

Two student-athletes worthy of further mention headlined these years at the turn of the century:  Art Devlin ’03 and Arthur Duffey ’03.

Arthur McArthur Devlin was a native of Washington, DC.  He arrived on campus the year following the 1899 championship baseball season and first made an impact on the gridiron as a punter, placekicker, and tackle-busting fullback.  A big man and fast to boot, he captained the Georgetown eleven the following year, leading his team to a 5-1-3 record and the championship of the South.  At the time, some thought he deserved a place on Walter Camp’s All-America football team whose selections in those years always belonged to players from the elite schools in the Northeast.  He is shown in the photo below holding the football in the front row.

On the diamond, Art held down first base for two years.  Highly efficient in the field and stealing bases at will, he and his teammates combined for a 22-3-1 record in 1900 and went 15-4-1 the following year.  Soon after, he left the Hilltop and spent the next two years playing minor league baseball and serving as head football coach at NC State University.



NY Giants manager, John McGraw, got a look at Art playing in Newark and signed him to a professional contract in 1904.  He took over at third base and started for the Giants for the next seven years.  His teams earned three National League pennants (1904, 1905, 1911) and one World Series win (1905).  In that five-game series victory, Christy Mathewson, his college baseball and football contemporary (at Bucknell) and future Hall of Fame pitcher, hurled three Series shutouts.



Recognized as one of the best third basemen in New York Giants history, Art led the league in stolen bases with 59 in 1905.  An average-to-good hitter in the dead-ball era, his career batting highlight actually came in his first major league at-bat when he hit an inside-the-park grand slam and collected four hits in five trips to the plate during his debut.  He went on to hit just nine additional home runs in his career.  

Art spent his final two years as a player with the Boston Braves before turning to coaching and scouting for the Giants, Braves, and Pirates. He also served stints coaching baseball at Fordham and basketball at the Naval Academy.  More information on Art Devlin can be found at this link:  Devlin on SABR.

Born in Boston and recruited to the Hilltop by coach Bill Foley, Arthur F. Duffy ‘03 was one of the greatest runners ever to attend Georgetown.  At the time of the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, he held the world record for the 100-yard (9.6) and 120-yard (11.8) dashes and was the holder of all national records up to 135 yards. 




Arthur was by far the favorite to win the Olympic 100-meters.  The finals had originally been scheduled for July 15th. However, many of the Americans had objected to racing on a Sunday. As a concession, the event was moved to the preceding Saturday.  This change meant that the sprinters had to run three races (a heat, the semifinal, and the finals) in one day.
 

While leading in the finals, Arthur pulled a tendon and fell.  He did not finish and was subsequently unable to compete in the 60-meter dash, which he had also been expected to win. 

Nevertheless, Arthur won multiple national championships, including the intercollegiate title in the 100-yard dash for three consecutive years.  During that time, he traveled throughout the countries of Europe, defeating the champions of England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, and Australia.  This linked video clip remarkably preserves one of these occasions:  Duffey in Birmingham, England in 1902. 

After retiring as a competitive runner, he joined the sports staff of The Boston Post.  A member of Georgetown's Athletic Hall of Fame, he was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2012. 

In the midst of these years of athletic success, Father President Whitney turned the University reins over to Jerome Daugherty, S.J. in 1901.  Fr. Daugherty soon developed an unfavorable attitude toward athletics, which he viewed as a financial burden to the school and towards the lax rules enforcement prevalent in intercollegiate sports.  In his last year in office, he announced that scholarship aid for athletics was to be eliminated, that students (not the University) would be liable for the financing of the teams, and that the faculty director of athletics would be responsible for ensuring that the members of Georgetown’s teams were bona fide students.  

These edicts were left to the next University president to carry out.  David H. Buel, S.J. (1905-1908) went further by setting severe restrictions on travel, which effectively cut down on the number of competitions for each sport.  Not surprisingly, Georgetown’s star in collegiate athletics began to dim.  Wanting to emphasize physical fitness for the entire student body, Fr. Buel did, however, fulfill the dream of former president, J. Havens Richards, S.J., to build a “modern” gymnasium.



Built for $60,000 in 1906 through a gift of Ida M. Ryan of New York, Ryan Gymnasium was intended to serve a population of around 250 students.  It operated as the practice gym and administrative home for the athletics programs for the next 45 years.  A handful of basketball games were played at Ryan before home contests were permanently moved to the small venue in 1914.  From 1918 through 1923, the team was undefeated in 52 games played there.  Among the gym’s limitations were its inability to accommodate more than 200 spectators and the inability to shoot a basket from the corners of the court without hitting the elevated track overhang.  The track was eventually removed from the gym in 1940 at the same time that an outdoor wooden oval was installed on campus.



Georgetown's athletic department vacated the facility in 1951 upon the completion of McDonough Memorial Gymnasium. The building was later reconfigured to house the Treasurer's office and eventually housed an on-campus branch of the Riggs National Bank. In 2005, it reopened as the Davis Performing Arts Center following a $21 million renovation effort.  Although it has not hosted an intercollegiate event since the mid-1900's, Ryan remains the oldest existing structure at Georgetown built for athletics. 

When Georgetown completed the new Ryan Gymnasium in 1906, it created a new need for a director of physical education.  The university looked to the preeminent fitness instructor in the region, 45-year old Maurice Joyce, to join the faculty.  And it is no coincidence that upon his arrival, a new intercollegiate sport began on the Hilltop, a sport that would eventually surpass, in national recognition, Georgetown's first four sports.



A man of many occupations – including circus performer, U.S. Marshall, and boxing coach to President Theodore Roosevelt – Maurice Joyce (1851-1939) was a pioneer of the sport of basketball and is credited with bringing the game to Washington, DC and with shaping the development of the sport. 

Newly arrived in Washington, DC in 1892, 31-year-old Maurice Joyce had taken on the job of director and physical instructor at the Carroll Institute, a city-wide amateur athletic club like many then in vogue in major cities throughout the nation. He came across descriptions of Naismith's pastime in a magazine and decided to try it out with his charges as a form of conditioning. Soon he was modifying and adapting rules to improve the game.  He dropped the number of game players from nine to seven. Teams throughout the land began to follow suit. By 1897, he put five men on the floor and a more recognizable form of competition began to take shape with teamwork now not only possible but desirable.



Having introduced the game to the District of Columbia, Joyce worked to spread the new sport throughout the mid-Atlantic region, if only to expand the number of potential opponents. He gave instruction at the University of Virginia and at the Naval Academy. Teams subsequently sprung up on those campuses. You can read more about Joyce by visiting here.

FOOTNOTES: 

Around 1895, as electric lighting was beginning to brighten the lives of Americans at home and at work, Theodore Woodward came to Georgetown University as an athletic trainer.  “Woody” was the first African-American to have been involved in Georgetown athletics.  He traveled to the 1900 Olympics held in Paris with a group of three Georgetown sprinters, Arthur Duffey, William Holland, and Edmund Minahan, who represented the United States.  The trio won four medals in Paris -- one gold, two silver and one bronze.  This still stands as the highest medal total by Georgetown athletes at any single Olympic Games.

Woody continued to work with Georgetown athletes for nearly 25 years.

As the first decade of the 20th century wound down, the University transitioned to its fifth president in 11 years with Rev. Joseph J. Himmel, S.J. serving a four-year term from 1908 to 1912.  In 1909, a hopeful spring baseball season followed by the fall football season brought their own measures of sadness and recognition of vulnerability to the invincible youths on the Georgetown campus.

Coming off of the previous season’s 17-7 mark, its best record in three years, the 1908 baseball champions of the South were confident and ready to defend in 1909, having lost just one player to graduation.  Under returning Coach Ed Grillo and led by a popular law student and skillful left fielder named Joe Courtney, the Hilltoppers were just beginning spring practice in early March of 1909.  



The inauguration of William Howard Taft as the 27th president of the United States was scheduled to take place that year on March 3rd.  That day, team captain Courtney (bottom row center in the above photo) made the decision to attend the inauguration parade.  As is evident from this linked video clip , it turned into the snowiest inauguration in presidential history with 9.88 inches falling in one day.  Joe contracted pleuropneumonia from exposure and died just two weeks later.  His loss was deeply felt by the entire University and cast gloom over the team and its upcoming season.  With future Georgetown Hall of Famer, Thomas Cantwell, chosen as acting captain, the Blue and Gray nine finished the year with a 15-11 record.  Nevertheless, the episode was an eerie foreshadowing of the indiscriminate toll taken upon Georgetown students and alumni a decade later by the Spanish flu.

By the fall of 1909, the restrictions placed on athletics by the University had taken their toll, especially on football, which as a sport was under fire nationally because of the violence on the field.  Efforts to curb the brutality through rule changes proved to be less than successful as young men continued to die each year from injuries suffered in games.  When Georgetown played its annual rivalry game against Virginia in November, 1909, the Blue and Gray were shut out.  But to everyone’s horror, Virginia's running back, Archer Christian, sustained a fatal brain injury after attempting a backward leap over the line of scrimmage.

Both schools canceled their remaining games and Georgetown announced that football was banned until and unless meaningful reforms were put in place.  There was an immediate outpouring of sympathy and support by Georgetown students, faculty, and staff toward the family of Archer, the Virginia team, and supporters.  So impressed was the president of Virginia that he soon wrote to Fr. Himmel of his deep appreciation of the kind hearts and minds of the Georgetown community.

To conclude on a happier note, the 1909 football season has another story worth mentioning.  Enrolled that year in the Law School was a graduate of the University of Maryland and a star quarterback during his time in College Park.  With eligibility still remaining, H. Clifton Byrd joined the gridiron squad and took full advantage of the recent rule change allowing the forward pass, and led Georgetown to its best record in three years.

Nicknamed “Curly,” he returned to College Park the following year, where he rose to the positions of head football coach, director of athletics and eventually, president of the University of Maryland.  In 1936, following a football contest between the two schools, Curly wrote to Georgetown president, Arthur O’Leary, S.J.  He recalled his playing days on the Hilltop, and complimented the Georgetown team and student body on their comportment and sportsmanship.

Hoya, hoya saxa!
 

Hoya, hoya Byrd!