Centennial Conference Championship wins in the past decade (Source: Gettysburgian survey of Centennial Conference Championships)
By Garrett Glaeser, Sports Editor
In the Centennial Conference’s twenty-eight years of existence, Gettysburg has won its fair share of games and championships. Walk the halls of the Jaeger Center and you’ll see walls adorned with images of outstanding teams and players. Just below the coaches’ offices are cabinets full of trophies and hall of fame inductees over the college’s long history.
Gettysburg’s first varsity sport was baseball in 1865, according to the school’s athletic records. Since then, Orange and Blue athletics, going by the Bullets since 1924, have competed in over a century of collegiate play. In that time Gettysburg has won countless games and brought home a number of championships. Having competed in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and the Middle Atlantic conference during the twentieth century, Gettysburg welcomed challenging opponents, facing off against a number of institutions that now have Division I athletic programs.
Until 1974, Gettysburg competed in the Middle Atlantic Conference University Division. At that point, the NCAA separated collegiate athletics into the three division system which endures today. Since then, Bullets have competed in NCAA Division III sports.
The Centennial Conference launched in the early 1980s with only one sport — football. Since its humble beginnings, it has grown to be among the most elite Division III conferences in the nation. Both from an institutional academic and athletic standpoint, the Centennial has been compared to the likes of the NESCAC, the elite private small college conference of New England where schools like Amherst, Tufts, Bowdoin, and Williams compete.
As one of the founding members of the conference, Gettysburg has been dueling it out with rivals Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, as well as Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, McDaniel, Muhlenberg, Swarthmore, Ursinus, and Washington College (WAC).
But the question remains: how has Gettysburg College stacked up against the conference competition? To solve this question, The Gettysburgian analyzed the history of the Bullets’ conference play.
Centennial Conference Championship wins by percentage over the past decade (Source: Gettysburgian survey of Centennial Conference Championships)
This investigation looks at conference championships won instead of games or national championships, which allows for an evening out of the statistical barriers when comparing team and individual sports and the differences in terms of season lengths.
The numbers used for this analysis were taken from the available record books from the Centennial’s website. These numbers, while an indicative of which teams won the conference title, were not measured in the same way every year. For example, there were a number of years in the late 1990s where field hockey did not have a tournament to declare a winner — only the team with the best record one. Teams have also shared conference titles in the past. This occurs the most among football teams — schools who shared the same record at the end of the season were declared co-conference champions.
Still, the record books allow for an unpacking of where Gettysburg athletics have shined, where they have faltered, and how our school has done in comparison to those we compete against.
According to the data, the men’s athletic programs at Gettysburg have won roughly 13 percent of all conference championships.
The women, in contrast, have won nearly twenty percent of all conference championships. In men’s sports, Gettysburg’s teams have won the fourth most out of the ten competing teams. The women’s teams won the second most out of the eleven teams.
The Bullets’ best teams in terms of titles are — without question — the swimming teams. When the men’s and women’s teams victories are combined, they have won significantly more championships than any other school in the sport. Coming in at a close second are both lacrosse programs, women’s golf and volleyball, all with double digit conference championships. After that, there is a steep drop-off in titles, but the sports within the closest proximity are field hockey and women’s soccer.
Only seven of Gettysburg’s twenty-four teams have not won a Centennial Conference championship, meaning that seventy percent of teams have at least one title. Every women’s team has won at least one title with the exception of tennis.
Conference Championship wins broken down by men’s and women’s teams and by sport (Source: Gettysburgian survey of Centennial Conference Championships)
The remaining question to ask is how we stack up with the competition. How does Gettysburg’s athletic success compare to those who we play against?
It will not be surprising to most that Hopkins has won the most total titles in the Centennial Conference. Their dominance in the past decade with tennis, track, and cross country, combined with their perennial talent in football and soccer, makes them the team to beat in most sports.
The Bullets come in a commanding second place, followed by Haverford, F&M, and Dickinson to round out the top five. It is the women’s side of Gettysburg athletics that leads the charge. Women’s sports have nearly two times as many title victories as the men’s teams.
Breaking it down by sport, lacrosse and swimming possess nearly two thirds of all championships won for the men’s teams. When looking at the same two sports for the women, we see an almost inverse result, with all other women’s sports claiming nearly two thirds of all titles. Part of the difference is due to the sheer amount of championships the women have won, but the tremendous success of women’s golf and volleyball should not be understated.
The Fords coming in third is remarkable, given that their championship distribution is among the lowest of all Centennial teams. What propels the Black Squirrels to title success is their dominance in men’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track during the 1990s and into the early 2000s.
Gettysburg is a proven elite athletic power in the conference and, arguably — because of the conference’s success — the nation. Our institution’s academic and athletic excellence, combined with the draw of the historical Gettysburg area, will likely continue to propel Bullets’ conference success. This season, look for perennial school powers like swimming and women’s lacrosse to keep winning, but keep an eye on the emergence of increasingly competitive teams, like softball and men’s golf.
This article originally appeared on pages 20 and 21 of the April 13, 2021 edition of The Gettysburgian’s magazine.
