What’s big, red, and is celebrated like a hockey version of Mardi Gras? That would be Rensselaer’s Big Red Freakout, of course!

Sixty years ago, NASA was formed, the microchip was invented, Ella Fitzgerald was on the radio, and four men from RPI won the National Handball Championship in Chicago, Illinois. That’s right! Mike McQuillen, Harvey Poppell, Jerry Gonick, and Fernando Arias, under the guidance of RPI’s Athletic Director, “Pop” Graham, won the National Cup in handball, a sport that the team, besides Gonick, had never played until freshman year of college.

With the 2018 Winter Olympic Games underway, this is a good time to highlight a recent acquisition in the Institute Archives and Special Collections: a lacrosse uniform worn in the XIV Olympiad in the summer of 1948!

For many years – 60 in fact – the holiday season held a special place in the hearts of devoted RPI hockey fans. Starting in 1951 Rensselaer hosted an annual invitational tournament that brought in teams from all over the United States and Canada. In fact, one team came from as far away as Sweden to compete in the 1980 event!

I was looking for a good sports theme for this post when I read that the RPI women’s lacrosse team was hosting the Liberty League championships this year.  I decided 2014 would be as good a time as any to watch my first lacrosse game.  I was not disappointed!

The Institute Archives wishes everyone a happy Spirit Day at Rensselaer. 

Every now and then unusual things cross my desk and I get to figure out what to do with them!  One case in point is a shopping bag of sports memorabilia, a pair of skates, and four wooden hockey sticks that were forwarded to me recently.

Image Mystery Image #30 generated an incredible amount of interest!  I'm so pleased it was such a great hit.

For those who follow sports, the crisp air of fall is strongly associated with an old tradition: RPI football. Intercollegiate games have been played at Rensselaer since 1886, albeit on borrowed fields and without a coach for the first twenty years. When the ’86 Field was completed in 1906, football soon became a popular spectator sport, as evidenced by the wonderful programs that promoted the team’s games.

Fishing through some unidentified photographs yesterday, I came across a folder labeled "Students" and within it I found this great photograph of a cheering crowd. As I stood above the image smiling (because this photo told me it was the next mystery image), I asked silently, who, what, when, and where? Look at their faces, there's so much intensity, excitement, maybe even dismay, perhaps suspension. This crowd is packed into a space with wood and leather seats, and one gentleman is holding what looks like a program with the Rensselaer seal on it. Hmmmm!