From The Trinity Ivy, 1889

The Lawn Tennis Club was organized by students in 1878. The sport was becoming very popular across the United States at the time, and the club received a plenitude of interest from Trinity’s students. The club began with twelve members, who practiced on the south end of the newly constructed campus. Much of the campus was still undeveloped, and the Tennis Club was obliged to set up a rope barrier, and then more substantial bar fencing, to keep out grazing cows. In 1881, the club was renamed the Trinity College Lawn Tennis Association.

Enthusiasm for lawn tennis grew so rapidly in the following years that, by 1883, there were six tennis clubs on campus, all of which were under the umbrella of The Trinity Lawn Tennis Association. Members from each club were selected for the varsity team. In addition, clubs federated within the wider Association were often designated by fraternities.

In April 1883, Trinity’s Association participated in the formation of the Intercollegiate Lawn Tennis Association with Amherst, Brown, and Yale. Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Williams, and the University of Pennsylvania joined the Intercollegiate Association later that year. It was at the second meeting of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, on October 9, 1883, that the Trinity Varsity Tennis Team wore the newly selected college colors of dark blue and gold for the first time.

Throughout the 1880s, tennis had a particularly privileged status at Trinity, with nearly every student being involved in one of the many teams and demands for new courts being made frequently in The Trinity Tablet. The varsity team did well in the intercollegiate competition, placing fourth out of ten for the first eight tournaments. By the end of the decade, Trinity held third place in the number of tournament prizes won.

In 1896, however, due to a dwindling student body in comparison to other Association colleges, the number of students playing tennis dropped, and Trinity withdrew from the Lawn Tennis Association competition.

Trinity College in the Twentieth Century: A History (2000), by Peter and Anne Knapp, pp. 32, 34.

The History of Trinity College (1967) by Glenn Weaver, pp. 210-11.

The Trinity Reporter, February 1973.

The Trinity Ivy, 1889.

The Trinity Tablet, 1879-05-17.