As part of the buildup to the 75th Anniversary celebration for Claremont McKenna College (visit CMC's 75th Anniversary Countdown Page to learn more), we are reliving many of the great moments and landmark years from CMS athletic department history over the 75-day countdown from April 17 to July 1. If you would like to add to the memories of one of these moments, or if you would like to submit your memories of your own favorite CMS Athletics moment, fill out the form on our main 75th Anniversary page.
Great Moments Featured in this Story
1987 Women's Soccer: Athenas Win SCIAC in Third Varsity Season
1987 Men's Water Polo: Stags Win SCIAC, WWPA Titles
1987 Football: Stags Win Back-to-Back SCIACs
1988 Women's Basketball: Athenas Win Program's First League Championship
1988 Baseball: Stags Win SCIAC, Earn No. 10 National Ranking
1988 Men's Tennis: Stags win SCIAC, Hinman/Au Win NCAA Doubles
CLAREMONT, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletic department has made a habit of placing bulk orders for SCIAC trophies. The Stags and Athenas have won 343 SCIAC titles, almost 100 more than any other SCIAC institution, despite getting a late start with their first year coming in 1958-59, more than 40 years after the Bulldogs, Poets, Tigers and Sagehens were up and running.
The 1987-88 academic year, though, was a first, as CMS was able to win all three of the All-Sports trophies that the league offers, capturing the most points in the men's, women's and combined standings.
The 1988 SCIAC Women's All-Sports Trophy was a first for the Athenas, who started their half of the athletic department in 1976-77 when Claremont McKenna first went co-ed. CMS had plenty of women's sports success quickly, with the cross country team winning a SCIAC crown in 1978 in only its second season, but having enough overall success to win the trophy was a slow and steady process.
Women's cross country continued its strong tradition in the fall of 1987, winning its second straight SCIAC title and its fifth in a 10-year span. But for the first time, they were not the only Athenas winning fall championships, as the upstart CMS Women's Soccer team won its first-ever SCIAC crown as well in its third season, clinching the title with a 3-0 win over Pomona-Pitzer.
In the winter, CMS Women's Basketball added its first SCIAC title in program history, going undefeated through the league and beating the Sagehens 60-58 to cap off a 10-0 SCIAC schedule. The women's basketball title gave the Athenas their third SCIAC crown in the seven sports they competed in at the time (women's swimming and diving, women's track and field, and women's tennis all came in second place that year).
The Stag half of the athletic department mostly just kept right on doing what they'd been doing, as men's water polo, men's soccer and men's swimming and diving all won the championships that were standard for those programs in that era. Men's water polo won its sixth of 11 straight SCIAC titles (and added a WWPA title in sudden death), men's swimming and diving took its seventh of 12 straight league crowns, and men's soccer captured its seventh of 14 in a row, tying La Verne with a 10-1-1 league mark.
Men's tennis, meanwhile, captured its third in a row, establishing a new king of the hill after Redlands dominated the league from 1950-1985. In addition to a tight win in the SCIAC Championships (by one point over the Bulldogs), Frank Hinman and Lance Au went on to become the first CMS doubles team to win a national title.
Football and baseball also captured SCIAC titles, with several players overlapping both championship teams, including Chris Dabrow, who set a CMS rushing record in the fall of 1987 that still stands, helping the Stags to their second SCIAC crown in a row, and then catching on the baseball team which won its second in a three-year span. The baseball team had one of its best seasons, winning the SCIAC and reaching as high as No. 10 in the country after a 16-2 league schedule. Lou Diaz, Mark Hoyt, and Pete Young were also in the football-baseball dual championship club, along with Dabrow.
CMS Men's Basketball made it a men's and women's hoops sweep in the winter with a 7-3 SCIAC record to take the league title, edging Redlands and Whittier by one game, matching the men's and women's soccer SCIAC title sweep in the fall. It was the second straight title for the Stags and part of a 4-titles-in-5-years stretch for the program from 1987-91.
Over the course of the 1987-88 academic year, CMS had a ridiculous amount of success across the board, going 10-for-17 winning SCIAC titles. Four of the other teams came in second, with men's track and field also finishing as runner-up, although the Stags still had an impact nationally, with seven All-American performances at the NCAA Track and Field Championships, where they finished 11th.
Since the 1988 sweep, CMS has won all three of the SCIAC All-Sports trophies 22 of 32 years, including a stretch of 12 in a row from 1993-2004 before Redlands temporarily took over the mantle in the second half of the decade. By 2010-11, the Athenas and Stags were back to sweeping, and CMS has now won 29 of the last 30 possible trophies, missing out only on the men's all-sports trophy in 2018, which traveled 1500 feet down the road for 12 months before returning back the following year.
Which was a relief -- it's always annoying when you have a nice, complete set of something and one of the items ends up missing.
