With the huge increase in interest in collegiate athletics (and the huge increase in money spent on it and generated by it), it might be useful to remember that the first athletic contests at SLII (UL today) were coupled with an oratorical rally.
UL’s athletic program can trace its formal beginnings to 1904 and the first rally of the Interscholastic Athletic and Oratorical Association.
Before that, the school had held intramural competitions, and had competed in pickup games against other schools in track and in football.
But President Edwin L. Stephens saw sports competition not only as a way to bring potential students to his campus, but to involve the community and the school’s alumni in its affairs.
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Jim Bradshaw
jbradshaw@theadvertiser.com