College Yell

Trinity Cheerleaders, 1916. Photo Credit: 1916 Trinity Ivy

Trinity College's original College yell or cheer was “Wah-Hoo-Ah.” It originated sometime between 1865 and 1870, after the Civil War and about the same time that intercollegiate athletics began to appear. The purpose of the yell was multifold: to raise morale and spirit, College pride, unity, and excitement. Individual class yells also appeared, for camaraderie between the classes.

While cheerleading today is almost exclusively associated with femininity, its origins began in the early twentieth century, when cheer or yell leaders began to appear across college campuses. The cheer leaders served “both to encourage the spectators and to serve as a form of crowd control,” so that cheering was synchronized and consistent. ¹⁾

Each year, Trinity students elected cheer leaders for the senior and junior classes who created, taught, and practiced cheers with their classmates before leading them during an event. The senior cheer leader was responsible for assessing future candidates from the sophomore class and was required to grade them according to personality, faithfulness, and originality. In 1923, the cheer leaders had a uniform of crew neck sweater, white pants, and gold band “looped from shoulder tip to shoulder tip.”

The Trinity yell was not only present at athletic events. It was used at the Lemon Squeezer Supper, ²⁾ Alumni Dinners, ³⁾ annual banquets ⁴⁾ parties, award presentations ⁵⁾ and College meetings; it was used anytime the students wished to convey their approval, support, or pride. By 1906, Trinity had a variety of cheers: “Rah Rah Rah! Trinity! Boom Rah, Boom Rah, Trinity!” appeared in 1896, and others such as “Trin, Trin, Trin” and “Hike-a, hike-a” the students considered monotonous, and therefore desired new ones.

In the December 1907 Trinity Tablet, an anonymous alumni from 1870 wrote that “it would be an interesting thing to trace the development of college cheering from some such shout as this to the elaborate unintelligibilities which now stimulate the college man to lofty deeds and self-sacrificing patriotism.”