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Basketball was the third major sport to be added to the
Coe athletic program. The first season is documented as the winter
of 1900-01. This team played with no coach, no uniforms, no home
gym, using the YMCA gym for practices and home games. The 1903
annual gives a team roster: "Perry Munger and Ray Chandler as
forwards, Hawley as center, and Milton Munger and Netolicky as
guards, have the honor of being the charter members of Coe's basketball team. Hawley and Netolicky were new men at the game but both
showed up well and played a good game." In fact, this team defeated
the YMCA team, as well as the quintet from the Cedar Rapids
Business College. Their season ended with losses against Western and Wilton
Colleges.
The year 1904 brought about the construction and
dedication of the Men's Gymnasium, as well the hiring of Mr.
Glasgow, Coe’s first official basketball coach. Unfortunately, these
additions did little for the team, as they lost all seven games that
season. The tide began to turn in 1907, however, with the return of
George Bryant to campus. Bryant, an outstanding athlete at Coe and a Princeton graduate, helped the Coe team defeat Normal, Lenox
and for the first time the State University
was defeated, 33-31. Another banner year for the team was 1910, the
first season first in which Coe beat Cornell at hoops, with scores
of 35-19, 37-31 and 31-23.
The first championship season was celebrated in the winter
of 1912. The Crimson and Gold beat Grinnell 20 to 15 for the Iowa
Conference championship. This victory was even sweeter for the Coe
boys because, according to the Cosmos, "the defeat was the first
dealt the ‘ex-champs’ on their own floor in eight years." Another
championship was won four years later, under the new coaching of Ira
Carrithers, who also served as athletic director. Throughout this
season, the Coe team defeated Ames (in the
first match-up between these 2 schools), State Teachers, Leander
Clark, Simpson and Cornell twice, and the Nebraska champion team from Nebraska Wesleyan. Grinnell was again
defeated for the championship, with a score of 17-15.
With yet another championship in 1922, Coe's only problem
was finding enough room for their spectators. The Men's Gymnasium
was no longer large enough to suit the needs of all the teams using
the space. For this and other reasons, the New Men's Gymnasium (now
known as Eby Fieldhouse) was built in 1930,and it is here that the
Coe cagers still practice and play 75 years later. |
