Athletics are ingrained in the culture of Adrian College. There is a wide variety of sports teams, including for relatively niche sports like cornhole and bass fishing, and the majority of students play a sport of some kind. You hear more about students’ coaches than their advisors. Even our motto, “No Victory Without Work”, seems to apply to athletics as much as academics. We haven’t always been this focused on sports, though. We didn’t even have a football team until 33 years after the school started. So, how did sports become such a large part of Adrian College?
Adrian College’s 1892 football team was, frankly, terrible. They played only one recorded game against Hillsdale, which they lost 0-56. This really sets the tone for early Adrian College sports. We didn’t earn any points in a football game until 1894 (still losing 4-28), and we didn’t win a game until 1896 (against Adrian High School). Between 1892 and 1907, Adrian scored zero points in about half of their games. It’s not surprising that we weren’t doing well, however. There are gaps in the records where there aren’t any recorded games or teams. Many of the teams we do have records for had no recorded coach or roster. Football wasn’t a priority at Adrian College at the time.
Even though the college began to invest more time into sports as the years progressed, it was still nowhere near the level that we see today. The school just wasn’t terribly worried about sports; they had a larger problem. Private colleges, especially private liberal arts schools, were failing nationwide. Adrian was no exception to this rule. With an enrollment of only 900 students, the college knew that it had to change something to stay afloat. A new President was hired, and he came with a plan. He knew that the only real way to save the college was to get more students, and he had an idea to bring them in. He planned to make a massive investment in extracurricular activities, with hopes that potential students would choose a smaller school if it would allow them to keep doing something that they enjoyed doing in high school. It was risky, but it worked. Under Jeffrey Docking’s Presidency, enrollment has nearly doubled, with President Docking estimating that 70 percent of students are athletes.
This explanation was surprising, both for how simple and recent it was. I expected a complicated and multifaceted reason for Adrian’s athletic programs to be as large as they are, so it was pretty shocking to find that it was not only implemented intentionally by one president, but also that said president is the current president. It’s a testament to how much influence Docking has had on the college that a change he implemented at the beginning of his term feels like it has been ingrained in the college’s culture since the start. Adrian College is increasingly built on its sports, and without the investment into athletics, the school might not have lasted as long as it has. The success of Adrian College is supported by the determination of its athletes. No victory without work, indeed.