College Yell

Trinity's College yell or cheer 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.

The original Trinity College yell is “Wah-Hoo-Ah,” created in the late 1860s. By 1906, Trinity had a variety of cheers: “Trin, Trin, Trin,” for example, or “Hike-a, hike-a,” which the students wrote were getting monotonous.

Though cheerleading is today associated with femininity, “cheerleaders — or 'yell leaders,' as they were then called — led cheers from the sidelines both to encourage the spectators and to serve as a form of crowd control.” ¹⁾ During the early twentieth century, Trinity students elected a cheer leader for each class. In 1914, the Trinity cheer leader “drilled the freshmen in the college yells and then practiced them with the whole college body” at the beginning of the fall semester. ²⁾

The Trinity yell was not only present at athletic events. It was used at the Lemon Squeezer Supper, ³⁾ Alumni Dinners, ⁴⁾ annual banquets ⁵⁾ parties, award presentations ⁶⁾ and College meetings.

In the December 1907 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.”