In the mid-1800s, more than 70 years before the University of Michigan broke ground on the Big House, sports on the Ann Arbor campus consisted primarily of running, weightlifting, hiking, fishing and casual team games like “old cat,” a precursor to baseball, and “wicket,” an off-shoot of cricket.
There were no practice fields and virtually no gyms — the one exception being an old military barracks that had been outfitted with basic equipment, like bars, poles and ropes. In 1860, however, students on campus mobilized to form the school’s first official club sport, and it wasn’t football or baseball. It was cricket.
The Pioneer Cricket Club, consisting of 25 male members led by U-M student Frank Todd, set up their wickets for the old English sport right in the middle of State Street. As the sport (and club) became more popular and street traffic in Ann Arbor increased, the State Street setup became impractical.
As a result, in 1865, the Board of Regents designated $50 to maintain a nearby field for the cricket club’s use. Records indicate the Pioneer Cricket Club changed its name to the University Cricket Club in 1864, and that they played the sport for more than a decade, with members either squaring off against one another or versus other clubs, including Lodi and the Peninsular Club of Detroit.
By the mid-1870s, however, membership of the University Cricket Club had begun to decline, amid the growing popularity of new athletic organizations, including baseball, which was established in 1864. Other sports to become officially organized at U-M during this period: boxing and football (played like rugby) in 1872, boating in 1873 and track in 1874. Football, played by the American rules, was officially established at U-M in 1879.
Today, U-M boasts 30 official sports club teams and 27 men’s and women’s varsity sports — though, currently, no cricket.
