As the 2024 Summer Olympic Games are set to open this July in Paris, France, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections looks back to the 1904 Olympics held in St. Louis, Missouri, where Wheaton College sent seven student-athletes to compete for the collegiate basketball championship.

Originally planned for Chicago, the 1904 Olympics were moved to St. Louis and combined with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition after extensive political negotiations from the World’s Fair organizers. Among 38 athletic contests, including wrestling, tug-of-war, track, and croquet, St. Louis marked the first time the new sport of “basket ball” appeared in the Olympics. Held as a demonstration sport, four levels of competition were offered, with Wheaton College participating in the College-level against two teams – Hiram College of Ohio and Latter-Day Saints University of Salt Lake City.

Of Wheaton’s intercollegiate sports, basketball has the longest consecutive record. The sport began at the College as an intramural activity in 1899. The game had been invented only eight years earlier by Dr. James Naismith, an instructor in the YMCA College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Wheaton students’ strong connection with YMCA groups in Chicago encouraged the quick adoption of the sport at the College. By 1901, Wheaton held its first inter-college competitive game – a two-game series that pitted the Wheaton women’s basketball team against that of DeKalb Normal School.

Wheaton’s new gymnasium, built in 1899, also supported the development of basketball at the College. Although its playing floor was only 77 ft. by 36 ft. compared to the contemporary 94 ft. by 50 ft., it was one of the finest gymnasiums in existence in Illinois at the time. Many early teams in the state played on slippery waxed floors in small square gymnasiums, or outside on clay fields. The great variety in spaces used by players led to a similar variety in rules and standards of play, with some courts having no out-of-bounds lines and others with mesh backboards or no backboards at all. Many teams also still used Naismith’s original model of peach baskets, rather than an open net, which meant that balls had to be fetched by ladder after each score. Due to the quality of the facilities and its proximity to Chicago and the YMCA teams, Wheaton became one of the first Midwest colleges to have varsity teams, although until 1910 they played as often against high school and YMCA teams as other colleges.

After a 1903-1904 season with the best winning percentage of any college in Illinois, Wheaton was invited to participate in the national college basketball tournament at the World’s Fair and Olympics in St. Louis, to be held in mid-July.

The April 1904 Wheaton Record gave an enthusiastic overview of the winning season of its Olympic-bound team:

“Wheaton can this year lay a just claim to the western college basketball championship. This claim is based on actual and comparative scores. The defeat of the Haskell, Fremont, and Indianapolis teams has put Wheaton in the lead as far as Western colleges are concerned, although they are not all strictly college teams, nevertheless they are the acknowledged leaders of all such teams in their respective states.”

Wheaton Record, April 1904, Page 9. Read the full series on the 1904 Wheaton basketball season here.

On July 13th, the three college teams gathered on an outdoor clay court to draw lots for the order of games. The College Olympic tournament was a three-game round, with the team who came out with the best record winning the top spot.

Wheaton’s first game came up against Hiram College. Wearing cleated shoes which quickly became heavy with mud and dirt from the clay field, the Wheaton team held Hiram to a tie 15-15 in the first half, but in the closing half fell behind, to a 20-25 loss. In the second game of the day, Wheaton rallied, beating the Latter-Day Saints University 40-35. However, Hiram won the third game against the Saints and so came away with the Collegiate title. Inaugurating a tradition that would continue through every subsequent Olympics, St. Louis rewarded the first-prize winner with a gold medal. With a tournament record of 1-1 against the Saints’ 0-2, the Wheaton team took home the silver medal.

Explore more historic photographs, videos, and records from Wheaton Athletics through the College Archives’ Athletic Department Records, covering more than 100 years of Wheaton sports.