Harvard, standing always in the nor-east wind of New England, has been a hockey college since the inauguration of the sport in the circles of intercollegiate athletics. Thirty years ago a group of Harvard students, with F. S. Elliot of the Law School and J. W. Dunlop '97 at their head, got out in the icy afternoons and froze their toes and their noses and their ears so that Harvard's hockey team today could work out in the finest indoor ice arena in New England.

A short stick rounded at one end and a hard rubber ball, together with the necessary ice, were all the implements for the first games of "ice polo", as the sport was known in Cambridge in 1896. There were no limits to the rink and so no player could be off side, and the games-generally developed into cross-country chases in which the man with the best wind kept ahead of his foe and scored goals.

Brown First Opponent

Brown was the first intercollegiate opponent of the Harvard team. Annual games were played until 1900, with even breaks in the scores, and in 1900 the first Yale game was played at the St. Nicholas rink in New York, with the Blue victor, with the Blue victory by a 5 to 4 count.

The Harvard hockey players had to battle everything but the police in their efforts to practice in those late winters of the Gay Nineties. An expedition, carrying all its worldly hockey goods with it, would set out in the afternoon, like Xenophon's Ten Thousand, looking for a place with ice. When it was found, camp was pitched, clothes were changed in the cold, and hockey was played as conditions permitted.

"Lost Puck"

Sticks and stones were pressed into use to mark the goals, and somebody's stray overcoat was the best apology for a net that could be found. Wild shooting sent the pucks into orchards and meadows and deep tangled wildwoods beyond the confines of the pond rink and no sandlot baseball game was ever more defendant on the finding of the only ball in the party than was the Harvard hockey team on the luck of the seekers after lost pucks.

Like swimmers stealing a dip in a wayside brook the skaters discarded their shoes and superfluous clothing at the side of the pond. Spectators, including small boys and ladies with mischievous and predatory instincts, watched the practice, and occasionally carried off souvenirs in the form of a shoe or two. Sometimes the home trek for the Crimson sextet was a walk on skates for a couple of uncomfortable miles.

Warm weather precluded workouts for the team, and trainers displayed ingenuity in devising means to keep their charges in condition. Some afternoons the team would assemble on Cambridge Common to sprint up and down and across the intricate pattern of boardwalks laid down there.

Just Rolling Along

One year the approach of an important game found the squad without work for two weeks due to the lack of ice. Resourceful as Ulysses, the manager produced a dozen pairs of roller skates. Up to the flat top of the Stadium trudged the team, and donned their rollers. A pistol was fired, and the men darted off to skate skate the top of the horseshoe and back. Tire trouble, specifically the loss of the rubber covering of the skate wheels, caused the withdrawal of all the entrants but one. He finished and still holds the Stadium roller skating record.

After 1900, Harvard and Yale met in annual games, and from the start of the series the Crimson maintained the superiority in the ice game that has kept Yale in submission since that date. Twenty-one of the annual series has been crowned by Harvard victories, and only six have gone the way of New Haven. Yale won the first game, in 1900, and took two out of three two years later after Harvard had scored a 4-0 shootout in the only game played in 1901. Through 1907 there was an unbroken run of Harvard victories.

Three Shutouts

A single-game win in 1908 was the only satisfaction that Yale got until 1917, the war year, when the Elis captured two of three games played, all of which were shutouts. Yale opened the firing that winter with a 2-0 victory in New Haven, and came to Boston to meet an aroused Crimson six that sent the visitors down to a 5-0 defeat. Back again in Connecticut, in his own backyard, the Bulldog greased up his runners and once more pinned a 2-0 loss on the Harvard's ans, but then the lean days started again.

The war paralyzed HarvardYale ice activity in 1918, and in 1919 the teams had to play in Brooklyn, which seemed to be a bad plan, since only one contest was played. Harvard fought off the Long Island damps better than Yale, and look the game, 4-1.