Football The Tufts football program is the oldest in the country. Its first game was played on June 4, 1875 against
Harvard which was won by Tufts 1-0. The 1,000th game in team history was played during the 2006 season. Historians point to this Tufts versus
Harvard game as the first game of
college football using
American football rules. The team plays at the Ellis Oval, located on the southwest corner of the campus.
Sailing The Jumbos particularly stand out in
sailing. The team competes in the
New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association, and has won the
Leonard M. Fowle Trophy eight times. The Jumbos also won the 2001 Dinghy
National Championship, and won more championships in the 1990s than any other team. Several world and Olympic champions have been a part of the Tufts Sailing Team; among them is
Tomas Hornos (class of 2010), who was
world champion in 2007, and
Kaitlin Storck, who was awarded the
ICSA Women's College Sailor of the Year trophy in 2008. Others include
Roger Altreuter in 1975,
R. Stuart Johnstone in 1980,
Paul Dickey in 1981, and
Senet Bischoff in 1996, who all won the
ICSA College Sailor of the Year trophy.
Other sports Men's Squash maintains a top 20 Division I national ranking. Tufts University won its first NCAA-sanctioned national team championship when the men's lacrosse team defeated
Salisbury in the
2010 Division III men's lacrosse final. Since then, Tufts has captured NCAA Division III National Championships in women's field hockey (2012, 2025), women's softball (three consecutive from 2013 to 2015), men's lacrosse again (2014, 2015, 2024, 2025), and men's soccer (2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2025). Tufts teams also reached the 2008 championship game in women's field hockey and the 2011 championship game in men's lacrosse. The men's basketball team played in the
1945 NCAA basketball tournament, involving eight teams. They lost to
NYU in the first round. ==Facilities==