Lake Larsen | Sports Editor
Western Oregon has existed as a school of many different names for 156 years. In this over a century and a half, the school has seen the birth and death of many different sports.
Since these sports departure the fields they called home have since been abandoned and forgotten. Welcome to the Western sports graveyard.
Tennis 1923-1990s
Tennis was first spotted on the Oregon Normal School campus as early as 1923. The program was split into a men’s team and women’s team and over the years these teams saw varying levels of success. There are years with no recorded mention of a tennis team, but its spirit lived a full life in Monmouth, finally seeing its death of an unknown cause in 1990.
Women’s Field Hockey 1925-1980s
The mysterious women’s field hockey team seemed to elude the history books for the better part of the 20th century. Pictures can be found of Oregon Normal School students playing field hockey during the 1925 school year. Skip forward 45 years and women are seen playing again. Their last sighting was in the early 80s, and not much is known since.
Golf 1920s-1980s
Another granny of the campus, along side the tennis program, golf has been spotted on the campus of Oregon Normal School, Oregon College of Education and Western Oregon State College. Perhaps the golfers would rather play a few holes than take a picture as records of the team are hard to come by. Lost on the back nine, the team seemed to fade from existence in the 80s.
Wrestling 1927-1991
Wrestling saw its first official team in the year of 1927. The wrestling team saw years of wins, losses, close-matches and eventually some national championship contenders. Wrestling is the only sport in the graveyard with a true murderer however. The team met a cruel fate after their 1990-91 season with the new Measure 5 ruling that defunded and killed the successful program after 64 years.
Swimming 1927-1980s
Splashing into pools for the first time in the late ‘20s, Oregon Normal School’s swimming team was host to all sorts of aquatic shenanigans. The death of the swimming program is lost to time as the history books have no clear answer to why they never made it out of the 80s.
Gymnastics 1971- 1980s
Blink and you’ll miss it, the gymnastics program was only alive for a short 10 years on the campus of Oregon College of Education. The team never saw much success in the gym, as noted by the Lamron staff never seeming to report on a match that was won. Evidence of the team can still be found on the walls of New PE showing off the teams of yesteryear.
Contact the author at howlsports@wou.edu
Photo courtesy of previous Western yearbooks: “The Norm” and “The Grove”
