One hundred and ten years ago, today, might have been the first soccer match at the University of Illinois, which was later followed by a variety of future teams who would organize on campus, bringing together citizens, immigrants, international students, residents, and the local community too.
Read on to learn more about the early soccer at the University of Illinois!
Written by Leanna Barcelona
There have been many strange events and occurrences on campus at the University of Illinois, but none quite as odd as the sport of “donkey basketball” that took place in the 1960s. The agronomy club Field and Furrow sponsored an event with the Agriculture Education Club on March 15, 1963 at 8:00 pm that included the unique form of recreation dubbed Donkey Basketball played by students and staff in the gymnasium in Huff Hall.[1] Several advertisements for the event appeared in the Daily Illini newspaper and a short article the day of the game was also published under the title, “No Horsing Around at Huff!”:
Donkey Basketball, heralded as “the world’s craziest sport,” is scheduled to invade Huff Gym at 8 tonight. An actual basketball game played on “donkeyback” will take place between the student organization of Agronomy [Field and Furrow] and Agriculture Education, two departments of the College of Agriculture at the University of Illinois. Staff members of each department will compete in the first half with students taking over in the last period. Rules for Donkey Basketball are similar to those used in ordinary basketball except their are only four players (and four donkeys) to each side. The primary object of the game is to get the ball through the hoop, but, as it turns out, a secondary object is to stay on the balking and bucking donkeys.[2]