Athletic Department Collection
Department History
1990-1925 / 1926-1937 / 1937-1941 / 1942-1946 / 1946-1966 / 1967-1998
Athletics at St. Thomas College had an early and precarious beginning. On Thanksgiving Day 1892 St. Thomas College defeated Carbondale high school in the first recorded football game. In 1893 a college Dramatic Society production was held to raise money for the library and to buy football uniforms. There appears to have been a couple games played in 1893 as well, but there was no regular schedule.
The first full football schedule occurred in 1898 when the “Tommies” went 8 and 1 and shut out all of their opponents, after losing the first game of the year 6-5 to Keystone Academy. In 1908 the Tommies went undefeated and unscored upon. But in 1911 football was dropped. It was reinstalled in 1916 and remained a full time sport until 1960.
Right before WWI Bill Moore effectively became athletic director at the College. For 12 years he coached all sports and organized a few. A basketball team was organized, after a few false starts, in 1916-1917. The team went undefeated during the 1921-22 and 1922-23 seasons and had a 40 game winning streak that ended in January 1924.
A baseball team had been fielded for one game in 1907 but quickly dissolved. A few similar one game seasons followed until Moore organized a team in 1916. The team went undefeated in 1917 but was then dropped until the 1920s.
John “Jack” Harding, a University of Pittsburgh football and baseball standout became football coach, basketball coach, and athletic director in 1926. He strengthened the program by eliminating games with junior colleges and academies. Within a couple of years the Tommies would only be playing varsity squads from four year colleges. During his twelve year reign he fielded solid and successful teams. The football team went 53-36-8 and the basketball team went 128-63.
After Harding left, the football program was lead by Tom Davies from 1937 through 1939. His 1939 team went undefeated and participated in one of the first televised football games, a November 16 NBC broadcast of a Tommie 31-0 route of the City College of New York. From 1939 through 1942, the football program was run by Robert “Pop” Jones.
Harding was replaced as basketball coach by James “Buck” Freeman who came from St. John's University in New York. He only coached one season but returned after WWII. From 1938 until the early 1940s Edward “Red” Coleman, a St. Thomas graduate, coached the basketball team. The basketball team was playing some major schools like the University of Tennessee and the University of Nebraska.
In 1942 The University passed from Christian Brother hands into Jesuit control. St. Thomas College had become the University of Scranton in 1938 but the athletic teams retained the names of Tommies or Tomcats.
As with most colleges, The University of Scranton saw its athletic programs curtailed by the drain of manpower into the war effort. A schedule of football games was arranged, many with teams from military training sites, during 1942. In 1943 varsity athletics were suspended. A few games were scheduled in 1944 by new football coach Pete Carlesimo but a full schedule did not return until after the war ended.
In 1946 Dean Father Coniff changed the team nickname to Royals, arguing that Tommies no longer made sense after the school changed its name and that Royals reflected the school’s royal purple color.
As students returned to college after WWII, athletics regained momentum. Additional sports were established including track, golf, and swimming. The football team had consistently winning seasons but began to limit itself to comparably-sized schools in the Northeast. But even though the football teams had winning seasons, attendance dropped as fans stayed home to watch national powerhouses battle on TV. Intercollegiate football was dropped as a varsity sport after the 1960 season. Football as a club sport was revived in the late 1960s and lasted until the mid 1970s but has since disappeared.
The basketball team, however, continued playing larger and more geographically diverse teams, but often with poor results. Between 1945-46 and 1965-66 the basketball team only had three winning seasons, two were in 1957-58 and 1958-59. The team joined the Middle Atlantic conference and almost won the MAC championship in 1958-59. Only when the basketball program dropped games with eastern basketball powers like Villanova and St. Bonaventure did the team begin to excel.
With the demise of football, basketball became the primary sport on campus. After the opening of the Long Center in 1967, the basketball program was rejuvenated. The team won its first twenty-one home games and the Royals won their first MAC champion ship in 1968-69. The next MAC title came in 1975-76 under coach Robert “Bob” Bessoir who was at the helm more than 25 years, retiring in 2001. The team also won its first national NCAA Division III championship in 1975-76 and won its second in 1982-83 and has played in the NCAA playoffs regularly. The team has also won the MAC championship twelve times in seventeen years.
The University has fielded winning teams in a variety of sports such as cross country, wrestling, rifle, and baseball.
Women’s basketball has also been successful. The program was established in 1975 and the team won its first Middle Atlantic conference Championship in 1977 followed by MAC championships in 1978 and 1979. In 1980 the team was third in the nation and contended for the title. The team continued to have winning seasons and gain MAC championships with its 6th coming in 1983. Their first NCAA Division III championship came in 1985. The team has also continued to appear regularly in the NCAA playoffs.
Scranton became a coed University in 1972. The first recorded appearance by women in University sports occurred in 1972 when two Marywood College students joined the University rifle team. By 1973 a woman participated in the karate club. In 1974 women were participating in Intramural sports including softball and basketball. By 1975 there were Intramural women’s teams in volleyball, tennis, field hockey and basketball. Many of these sports would progress to varsity status during the 1970s and 1980s.
Scope and Content Note
The Athletic Department collection is composed of 14 record boxes, two manuscript boxes, and a small number of scrapbooks and plaques and is arranged in four series. The material dates from t he 1890s into the early 1980s. The earliest material is very sparse, as might be expected, and consists of a few photographs of the football team. But from the 1910s on most sports programs are well-documented. Documentation for the various programs generally consists in photographs (both posed and action), correspondence, scoring sheets, pressbooks, schedules, game programs, statistics, advertisements, financial reports, and other material. The sports covered are football (1890s-1960), basketball (1910s-1982), baseball (1953-1975 not complete), track/cross country (1947-1975 substantial gaps), golf (1933-1975 substantial gaps), swimming (1935-1953), tennis (1933-1983 substantial gaps), as well as limited material on soccer, wrestling, volleyball, and rifle. There is only one folder on women’s sports, 1980-81 basketball. There is one film, in three reels, of the 1968 basketball game with Colgate.
The collection also includes material on the University’s participation in various sports in the National Youth sports Program and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.
Telephone: (570) 941-6341
Fax: (570) 941-7817
Email: Michael Knies, Special Collections Librarian
