1875
Ohio Wesleyan students organize their first football team. The faculty objects, and football is discontinued as an intercollegiate sport for 15 years.
1888
Fairbanks Gymnasium is built, giving Ohio Wesleyan its first forum for physical education and athletics. The building was located east and slightly south of the current location of Elliott Hall and was named in honor of Charles W. Fairbanks, class of 1872, who later became Vice President of the United States under Theodore Roosevelt. Prior to the opening of Fairbanks Gymnasium, the University's limited physical education facilities were located in the basement of Elliott Hall.
1889
Ohio Wesleyan fields its first intercollegiate baseball team. Ohio Wesleyan students had played home exhibition games against other schools as far back as the late 1870s, but away games were prohibited by a faculty rule barring road trips for athletic purposes.
1890
Cardinal and black are selected as Ohio Wesleyan's official colors. Formerly they were pearl and gold.
After a winter of preparation, the football team plays its first intercollegiate contest. Ohio State tops Ohio Wesleyan, 20-14, on Saturday, May 3. The team played 3 games that fall.
The Athletics Park (soon to be known as Edwards Field), located where Branch Rickey Arena and Gordon Field House stand today, becomes home of the baseball and football teams. The grandstand at the Athletics Park opened on June 7, 1890, and that fall, a fence was erected along the south side of the grounds. Games prior to this point were played at a variety of sites. One popular site was the hollow between present-day Phillips Hall and Delaware Run on the eastern edge of campus, another was north of Monnett Hall, the site of present-day Austin Manor.
1891
The football team records an undefeated season, shutting out Denison and Miami en route to a 4-0 finish.
1897
Fielding H. Yost coaches the football team to a 7-1-1 mark and Ohio Wesleyan claims the state championship. The Red and Black shut out 6 opponents, including Ohio State and Michigan. The scoreless tie with the Wolverines ends up leading Yost to the Michigan head coaching job.
1902
Ohio Wesleyan joins Case Tech, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio State and Western Reserve University in forming the Ohio Athletic Conference.
1903
After signing a professional baseball contract and thus becoming ineligible to continue his collegiate playing career, Branch Rickey '04 becomes Ohio Wesleyan's baseball coach. During a baseball trip, Rickey's catcher, Charles Thomas, a black student from Zanesville, Ohio, is denied lodging at a hotel in South Bend, Indiana. Rickey was able to convince the hotel manager to allow Thomas to stay in his room as an unregistered guest, but the event was burned into his memory and proved to be his inspiration in signing Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers over 40 years later.
1904
Rickey's baseball team wins 14 games, a school record that would stand for 81 years.
1906
Edwards Gymnasium is dedicated on Feb. 22. Ohio Wesleyan's first varsity men's basketball team plays its games in the still-unfinished facility, compiling a 4-4 record. The gym was named after John Edwards, who served on the Board of Trustees in the late 1890s and early 1900s. One of the biggest facilities in the state at the time, Edwards was one of the first sites for the Ohio high school basketball tournament championships, which it hosted into the 1930s.
Ohio Wesleyan is represented in the first meeting of 39 members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) on December 29. The IAAUS eventually became known as the NCAA.
1907
Branch Rickey, who returned to his alma mater as football, men's basketball, and baseball coach and athletics director, and halfback James Rike, who rushed for 1016 yards in 1906, lead the football team to a 7-3 record.
1909
Another Hall of Famer, Lynn St. John, becomes the head football, men's basketball, and baseball coach and athletics director. Under St. John, Ohio Wesleyan surrenders a total of only 56 points during the 1910-11 seasons but records back-to-back 6-3 finishes.
1913
Under the direction of coach and athletics director Frederick W. Dixon, the men's soccer team plays Ohio State in what was reported as "the first game of intercollegiate soccer ever played on Ohio soil." Ohio Wesleyan wins by a score of 1-0 on Saturday, Dec. 6.
1917
With World War I affecting both the number of players on the team and the ability to schedule games against other institutions, men's soccer is dropped as a varsity sport. Men's soccer would return as a club sport in 1953 and would regain varsity status for the 1955 season.
1919
The gridiron on Edwards Field is rotated from a north-south alignment to east-west, with additional bleachers constructed on the north side of the field.
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