1. Stevens gets the ball rolling: When the men’s directorate was asked to recommend the first director of Athletics, they wanted a winner and Warren Stevens fit the bill. Appointed in 1932, he acted as the football coach and a major proponent of athletics at U of T. Under his watch a new era of progress was begun.

“Stevens made athletics serious,” said Paul Carson, the Executive Assistant to the Dean in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health. “He achieved in making athletic studies a respected academic discipline. U of T was the first to do that.”

  1. The axe falls…almost: The lowest point in U of T athletics came during the Ontario Budget Crisis of 1992. In one fell swoop of the pen the administration cut the department’s annual financial allotment from $1.5 million to about $250,000. While the academic program was not affected, the athletic department faced a complete vivisection.

The biggest drain on the budget, Varsity Stadium’s constant renovation, led to the recommendation to cut 13 varsity teams from U of T, including football.

“It was a complete crisis, an unbelievably tense time,” Carson recalls. “The university was getting hammered in the media, by the students, and by alumni. Everyone was upset over losing the teams.”

Eventually Bruce Kidd, then head of the separate School of Physical and Health Education, and others negotiated a package that saved all the teams that were on the chopping block.

  1. Gender equity established: While the financial crisis happened in the fall of 1992, the following season the football team won their last Vanier Cup.

“Here was this team that everyone thought was going to be cut, and the following year they go out and win the national championship,” Carson said.

While a positive moment for the program, looking over the budget it was observed that the majority of money was being spent on advertising male sports. A Gender Equity Task Force was created in response and, in the Spring of 1994, the Council of Athletics and Recreation voted overwhelmingly to approve the far-reaching recommendations.

“Within two years of the vote, the women’s intercollegiate budget was to be equal with the men’s-down to the penny,” Carson said. “We were the first university to have budget equity. It spawned ethno-cultural and gender relations programs, and established U of T as being on the cutting edge of inclusive policies. It also brought the athletic department back to the tradition of being student driven.”

  1. The “new” Varsity Centre gets approved: In what was deemed a “groundbreaking step for better student services” by U of T president Dr. David Naylor, the Varsity Centre for Physical Activity and Health had its groundbreaking ceremony in November 2005. Stage One of the new facility, costing about $16.3 million, is expected to be completed by September 2006 and will feature a 5,000-seat stadium with an artificial playing field and an eight-lane all-weather track.

The state-of-the-art surfaces will accommodate field hockey, football, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, track and field, and enable major expansion of the intramural and instruction programs, casual recreation and community access. Subsequent plans for the bubble structure, to be used during the winter months, and a four-storey south-end building are part of a planned $56 million complex that will be open to Toronto community by 2008.

Phys. ed. Dean Bruce Kidd called the upcoming stadium the “future centre of campus life and community activity.”

  1. Where it all began: In W.J. Loudon’s Studies of Student Life, published in 1926, he noted that his and earlier generations of U of T students followed the dogma “principal business, study; their recreation, walking.” Against this mindset, the first “gymnasium” on campus was constructed in 1865. It was a framed structure-little better than a shed-created 100 feet north of the current University College’s dining hall.

The structure was thought so little of that its steward, Frank Somers (no relation to the sports editor), built a lean-to alongside it to house a pig meant for the consumption of students in residence later that winter.

Not long after the gym’s construction, U of T President James Loudon encouraged the student population to approach the authorities for the allotment of proper gymnasium equipment. By asking the College Senate to add a fee of one dollar to be added to tuition, along with a joint donation of $200 from the U of T Senate, space was made available in Moss Hall until it was demolished in 1888.

Finally, after a Herculean effort in garnering public support by the Gymnasium Committee, a grant of $25,000 from the Senate, and with most of the manual labor done by the students, a proper gymnasium was built in 1893. It was kept in use until 1912. Hart House became the university’s main athletics facility-at least for men-when it opened in 1919.