The first contest between cross-state rivals Washington State and the University of Washington took place on a muddy field in Seattle in November 1900. The Washington Agricultural College “Farmers,” as the Cougs were known then, made the 290-mile trek from Pullman to Seattle to play the UW “Sun Dodgers” in the pouring rain. The match ended in a five-to-five tie. In 2007, WSU beats UW in the 100th Apple Cup. They score in the last minute to beat the Huskies, 42-35.
Jason Gesser broke several Cougar football records during his time at WSU. He was the only player to be selected as team captain three times, and the only quarterback to have back-to-back double-digit win seasons. The “winningest quarterback in WSU history” played briefly in the NFL, CFL, and AFL, then coached for the Idaho Vandals and the Wyoming Cowboys, and in 2014 returned to WSU as an analyst for the football radio broadcast team.
The WSU boxing program, started by coach Issac “Ike” Deeter in 1932, ended after the 1959-1960 school year. The NCAA closed all college programs in 1961 following a death at an NCAA tournament a year earlier. A shortage of opponents in the west coast also spelled doom for the boxing program as transportation costs continued to rise.
Deeter, a 1929 WSC alumnus, coached for 24 years, directing the Cougars to eight Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) titles, produced 53 PCC champions, and his fighters won 15 individual NCAA titles. Deeter continued to teach physical education classes at WSU until his retirement in 1967.
Dietz arrives on campus to take over the reins of a football program that hasn’t compiled a winning record in five seasons. He transforms the squad into a juggernaut that finishes 7-0 and holds opponents to a total of 10 points for the season. The historic year culminates with a WSC blanking of Brown, 14-0, in the 1916 Rose Bowl.
Dietz comes west after attending and then serving as assistant coach at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a teammate of the immortal Jim Thorpe and was coached by Glenn “Pop” Warner, considered one of the game’s greatest coaches and innovators.
Dietz guides WSC’s gridiron fortunes for 3 years. His teams post a 17-2-1 record with 15 shutouts. After leaving Pullman, Dietz goes on to a successful coaching career at Mare Island, Purdue, Louisiana Tech, Wyoming, Stanford, Haskell, the NFL’s Boston Redskins, Temple, and Albright College. Also an accomplished artist, he contributes sketches for the Walt Disney film Bambi.
The National Football Foundation selects Dietz for the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.
Coach Donnie Marbut leads WSU’s baseball to a third place finish in the Pac-10 Conference. Of 37 season wins, three happen in a NCAA Regional playoff in Fayetteville, Ark. At the NCAA Rowing Championships in Gold River, Calif., WSU Rowing places eighth in the second varsity and 13th as a team. Jane LaRiviere coaches.
With a 15-5 victory over second-ranked Norwich, followed by a 37-0 win over top-ranked Temple, the WSU Women’s Rugby team wins the USA Rugby Division II Women’s national championship in Palo Alto, Calif. They would win another title in 2013 before moving to Division I in 2014.
In December, Paul Wulff, WSU graduate and former Cougar football player, is named WSU football coach following eight years as head coach at Eastern Washington University. He succeeds Bill Doba who was at WSU for 19 years, the last five as head coach. In late November, Doba’s coaching career concluded in Seattle in the 100th Apple Cup football game where WSU defeated the University of Washington Huskies, 42-35.
For the first time since the 1993-94 season, the WSU men’s Cougar basketball team made the NCAA men’s national basketball tournament, coached by Tony Bennett. The Cougars won their opening-round game over Oral Roberts, but lost to Vanderbilt in the second-round. WSU finished second in the Pac-10 Conference with a 26-8 season win-loss record. Tony Bennett, who won numerous Coach of the Year honors, succeeded his father, Dick Bennett, who coached the Cougars for three seasons.
The WSU women’s rowing team took fourth place at the 2006 NCAA Championships in May in New Jersey. In the Cougars’ best finish ever at the NCAA level, the varsity eight and varsity four each finished fourth. Earlier that year, the Cougars finished second overall at the Pac-10 Championships in California. Jane LaRiviere of WSU was named “Coach of the Year” for Pacific-10 Women’s Rowing and for the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association West Region.
During the 2005-06 year, the WSU Cougars had a football and men’s basketball “sweep” of rival University of Washington Huskies. In fall 2005, WSU beat the UW in the annual Apple Cup football game. In the winter of 2006, the Cougars beat the Huskies in both basketball games. The last time the Cougars had such an academic year “sweep” of the Huskies was 1968-69.
The athletic highlights of 2003 included women’s golf making its first NCAA appearance, a WSU swimmer competing in the NCAA championship, rowing making its first team NCAA appearance, and Whitney Evans winning NCAA, NCAA regional, and PAC-10 high jump titles.
The WSU football team had a successful year in 2003. It began with the 2002-03 football team (named PAC-10 Conference co-champions) playing in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2003. The Cougs lost to Oklahoma 14-34. For the 2003 season, former assistant Bill Doba became the Cougars’ new head coach, succeeding Mike Price. The Doba-led team played in the 2003 Holiday Bowl football game on Dec. 30, 2003. The Cougars beat Texas 28-20. The 2003 season marked WSU football’s third straight 10-win season. The Cougs were the first Pac-10 team to achieve this feat in 70 years.
Cougar women’s volleyball received an NCAA Championship tournament at-large berth for the ninth time, all in a twelve year stretch, hosting the first and second rounds of play.
Volleyball coach Cindy Fredrick concluded her seventh season at WSU by being named PAC-10 Conference Coach of the Year, and was named AVCA District VIII Coach of the Year as well. The team finished 22-7 overall and third in the Pac-10, led by All-American Sara Silvernail.
Coach Lisa Gozley and the WSU women’s soccer team made their first NCAA Tournament appearance. The Cougs were ranked 19th by “Soccer America,” the oldest magazine devoted to American soccer.
The WSU women’s junior varsity crew team captured the crown at the National Collegiate Rowing Championship Regatta on Lake Harsha in Ohio. It was the first title for the five-year-old rowing program.
The WSU men’s basketball team received an invitation to play in the NCAA Championship Tournament. They lost in the first round to Boston College, 64-67.
The WSU women’s volleyball team won the National Invitational Volleyball Championship (volleyball’s equivalent of basketball’s NIT) by beating Bowling Green University in three straight sets. The team did not lose a single game throughout the tournament.
Josephat Kapkory claimed the 3,000-meter title at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1994, Kapkory captured the 10,000-meter title at the NCAA Cross Country Championships.
The WSU men’s basketball team received its first invite to the National Invitational Tournament. The Cougs lost in the second round to University of New Mexico.
Legendary coach and athletic director J. Fred “Doc” Bohler leads the Crimson and Gray to a 25-1 record during the 1916-17 season, the best record in school history. The team features the core of Bohler’s outstanding 1915-16 squad: Roy Bohler (captain and brother of the coach), Ed Copeland, Bob Moss, Ivan Price, and Al Sorenson. The team’s accomplishment is even more remarkable considering it plays 18 of 26 games on the road.
In 1917, college basketball doesn’t yet have a formal way to determine a national champion at the end of the season. A panel of experts chosen by the Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936 in part to retroactively select national champions in football and basketball for seasons in which a formal champion wasn’t determined, didn’t forget WSC. In 1943, the foundation declares Bohler’s team 1917 national champions.
The previously undefeated Cougars fall to Alabama, 24-0, a game attended by an estimated 60,000 fans on a drizzly New Year’s Day in Pasadena.
Pacific Coast Conference champions thanks to a dominating defense, the WSC defensive line is anchored by All-American Mel Hein and Glenn “Turk” Edwards, considered two of the greatest Cougars ever.
As a psychological ploy, Washington State dresses for the game in red helmets, jerseys, pants, socks, and shoes.
On October 25, an underdog WSC football team travels to Berkeley and defeats the heavily favored California Bears, 14-0. After the game, a Bay Area sportswriter says the visitors “played like cougars!” Back in Pullman, a jubilant student body picks up on the idea, and three days later votes to select the name “Cougars” for its athletic teams.
WSC receives its first live cougar mascot in 1927, which is named “Butch” to honor star football player Herbert “Butch” Meeker.
A crowd of 10,000 in Pasadena watches as undefeated Washington State shuts out Brown in the second Rose Bowl game ever played. Coach William “Lone Star” Dietz and his Cougar squad serve as extras in the football film “Tom Brown of Harvard” each morning and then hit the practice field in the afternoon during the two weeks leading up to the bowl game. Each player receives $100 for the 14 mornings of movie work.
The college inaugurates the sport by defeating the University of Idaho, 10-0. The team doesn’t employ a paid coach until 1900, but advisers in the first couple years include newspaperman William Goodyear, agriculturalist William J. Spillman, and young athlete Fred Waite.
1894 team, reproduced in a 1934 40th Reunion Banquet brochure. Item held at WSU’s MASC, Collection WSU 31Pullman Herald, November 1894.
