Athletics were not regularly organized, nor had we any gymnasium. We played base-ball, wicket ball, two-old-cat, etc., but there was no foot-ball nor any trained "teams." There was mere ex tempore volunteering. We had jumping wickets in the same way. Fencing and boxing were totally neglected. The Huron River furnished little opportunity for boating. This we may take as a fair picture of athletic activities for many years. Cricket was undoubtedly the first sport to be organized in the University, as the _Palladium_ for 1860-61 gives the names of the eight officers and twenty-five members of the "Pioneer Cricket Club," while the Regents' Report for June, 1865, shows an appropriation of $50 for a cricket ground on the Campus,--the first official recognition of athletics in the University. The game of wicket, which was a modification of cricket, was played with a soft ball five to seven inches in diameter, and with two wickets (mere laths or light boards) laid upon posts about four inches high and some forty feet apart. The "outs" tried to bowl these down, and the "ins" to defend them with curved broad-ended bats. It was necessary to run between the wickets at each strike. The need for a gymnasium was speedily recognized, but the agitation for it among the students continued for thirty years before the present building was finally completed in 1894. The first gymnasium was an old military barracks which was transformed into a gymnasium of a sort about the year 1858. It stood near the site of the old heating plant at the side of the present Engineering Building, and as it was very open to the weather, resting only on poles sunken in the ground and with a tan bark floor, it was used only in warm weather. The apparatus consisted of a few bare poles, ropes, and rings. Even this make-shift was short-lived, for in 1868 the class of '70 erected a "gymnasium in embryo" described by a graduate of '75 as "two uprights with a cross-beam and ropes dangling from eye-bolts--the remains of some prehistoric effort towards muscular development," which was to be found "back of the Museum";--otherwise the old North Wing. Mark Norris, '79, thus pictures the comparatively primitive state of athletics in the University of his day: The athletic side of the University was almost wholly undeveloped in 1875. There was no organization and no chance for systematic work. The absence of a gymnasium and practice ground will account for this. Football was a contest between classes, and a mob of 100 to 150 men on a side chasing the pig-skin over the Campus was a sight to make the football expert of today go into convulsions. We had a little base-ball of the "butter fingers" type. At one time we had a boat-club, which navigated the raging Huron above the dam in a six-oared barge.