Baseball Major leaguers pitcher
Craig Breslow (Oakland A's and Boston Red Sox) and catcher
Ryan Lavarnway (Boston Red Sox/Los Angeles Dodgers), among others, played baseball for the Bulldogs. Perhaps Yale's most notable baseball player, however, was future U.S. president
George H. W. Bush, who played for the Bulldogs in the late 1940s. Breslow led the Ivy League with a 2.56 ERA in 2002. Lavarnway led the NCAA in
batting average (.467) and
slugging percentage (.873) in 2007, set the Ivy League hitting-streak record (25), and through 2010 held the Ivy League record in career
home runs (33). In August 2012, Breslow and Lavarnway, playing for the Red Sox, became the first Yale grads to be Major League teammates since 1949.
Men's basketball The men's basketball team has been named national champion on six occasions – in 1896, 1897, 1899, and 1900 by the
Premo-Porretta Power Poll, which began retroactive selections with the 1895–96 season; and in 1901 and 1903 by the
Helms Athletic Foundation, which began retroactive selections with the 1900–01 season. Penn and Yale played in the First College Basketball game with 5 men on a team in 1897. Yale has won seven Ivy League championships – 1957, 1962, 1963, 2002, 2016, 2019 and 2020. It also won the
Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, the forerunner to the Ivy League, eight times – 1902, 1903, 1907, 1915, 1917, 1923, 1933 and 1949.
Men's crew Football The
football team has competed since
1876. They have won nineteen
national championships when the school competed in what is now known as the
FBS. They are perhaps best known for their
rivalry with
Harvard, known as "The Game". Twenty one former players have been inducted into the
College Football Hall of Fame. The Bulldogs were the dominant team in the early days of intercollegiate football, winning 27
college football national championships, including 26 in 38 years between 1872 and 1909.
Walter Camp, known as the "Father of Football," graduated from
Hopkins Grammar School in 1876, and played
college football at
Yale College from 1876 to 1882. He later served as the head football coach at Yale from 1888 to 1892. It was Camp who pioneered the fundamental transition of American football from rugby when in 1880, he succeeded in convincing the Intercollegiate Football Association to discontinue the rugby "scrum", and instead have players line up along a "line of scrimmage" for individual plays, which begin with the snap of the ball and conclude with the tackling of the ballcarrier.
Men's golf The
Yale Men's Golf Team has won 21
collegiate team championships (all except 1943 were bestowed by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association): 1897, 1898 (spring), 1902 (spring), 1905–13, 1915, 1924–26, 1931–33, 1936, 1943. They have crowned 13 individual champions: John Reid, Jr. (1898, spring), Charles Hitchcock, Jr. (1902, fall), Robert Abbott (1905), W. E. Clow, Jr. (1906), Ellis Knowles (1907),
Robert Hunter (1910), George Stanley (1911), Nathaniel Wheeler (1913), Francis Blossom (1915),
Jess Sweetser (1920), Dexter Cummings (1923, 1924), Tom Aycock (1929). Both are records. They have won 10
Ivy League championships since the League championship was started in 1975: 1984–85, 1988, 1990–91, 1996–97, 2003, 2011, 2018. Both the Men's and Women's Golf Teams play out of the
Yale Golf Course which has been ranked the best collegiate golf course in the country by Golfweek.com as well as other news outlets.
Men's ice hockey The Yale Men's Ice Hockey team is the oldest existing
intercollegiate hockey program, having played its first game in 1896 against Johns Hopkins (a 2–2 tie). The team competes in the
ECAC Hockey League (ECACHL); in addition the
Ivy League also crowns a champion for its members that field varsity ice hockey. The Bulldogs (coached by
Keith Allain) won the 2013 NCAA National Championship in Pittsburgh with a 4–0 shutout of Quinnipiac University.
Men's lacrosse Men's soccer Yale's first attempts with "kicking games" have roots in the 1860s, when the University, along with
Princeton,
Rutgers, and
Brown, started to play a form of
football that resembled the Association game. Nevertheless, after a
rugby football played v
Harvard in 1875, Yale dropped the association football in favor of rugby. Before the NCAA began its tournament in 1959, the annual national champion was declared by the
Intercollegiate Association Football League (IAFL) — from 1911 to 1926 — and then the
Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association (ISFA), from 1927 to 1958. From 1911 to 1958, Yale won four national championships.
Men's squash Men's swimming and diving Men's tennis Irvin Dorfman played tennis for Yale (1947), and was later ranked No. 15 in singles in the United States in 1947, and No. 3 in doubles in the U.S. in 1948. In 1946 he won the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis Title. Richard Raskind, later known as
Renée Richards, was captain of the 1954 men's team and later became a professional female tennis player. ==Women's sports==