Sports in the Ivy League spread through the socioeconomic ranks

In the early 19th century, in London's Fleet Prison, men were beating each other with sticks and breaking bones. This was a sport that, with a couple changes, spread to the Harrow School in 1820 under the name of "squash rackets."

It then experienced several years of favor among the upper crust of English society before spreading throughout.

Such an anecdote relates to college athletics, where sports have fluctuated in popularity among the various socioeconomic classes. In some cases, though, a sport will begin by primarily being played among the upper class and then filter through from there.

When sports are in this nascent stage and without some of the socioeconomic diversity, the Ivy League or other prestigious schools like Stanford University have had the strongest program in that sport in the country.

Golf, for instance, is much more widely played than it was 100 years ago. From 1897, when the national collegiate golf championship was started, until World War II, expensive and socioeconomically isolated institutions such as Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Princeton universities won every men's national championship save two.

Since 1945, the only school of those four that has challenged for the title has been Stanford, which is able to offer scholarships.

The trend exists in other sports as well — tennis has a nearly identical list of champions through the 1920s, and Stanford has been the only one of the four to challenge since.

Today, the opportunities to play sports are much more varied. Fencing, a sport with an upper-crust reputation, has taken strides in the last 50 years to increase the access of less privileged people to play that sport.

"I think that [fencing] is a sport that's perceived [as an upper-class sport], mostly by people that don't do it," junior epee Soren Thompson said. "I think that if you take a cross-section, you'd find it was pretty diverse."

Thompson said that the sport used to be very isolated, but has since spread. The University usually has a strong program — it finished fifth in the nation last year — but the best is not from the Ivy League or another private school, but usually Penn State, a public university that has a low price tag, made even lower with athletic scholarships.

Furthermore, several organizations have sprung up to help bring sports to people who may not have otherwise been introduced. By offering training and funding to promising high school fencing students, the Peter Westbrook Foundation in New York has brought the sport to different socioeconomic classes.

"The foundation does a great job at spreading the sport to a non-fencing demographic," freshman Kamara James, a previous participant in the organization, said. "It turns out the largest inner-city demographic from the fencing world."

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Scholarships continue to change the dynamics of sports, and the absence of them in the Ivy League has put the University at a disadvantage in competing on the national level, and may continue to do so in the future.

The men's and women's lacrosse teams have combined for eight national championships in the last 10 years. Historically, their sport has been somewhat isolated in the Northeastern prep schools. Recently, it has been growing very quickly, mostly among the middle class.

"Early on, the schools in the areas it was played were the New England and Baltimore prep schools," senior men's lacrosse midfielder Josh White said. "The stereotype is not as true any more. It's now so much more widely played. It's the fastest growing sport seven of the last 10 years."

White continued, pointing out that while many teams playing Div. I lacrosse are private schools, there is a movement taking place. About 200 club teams, most of which are at large state schools across the country, now participate in a league with an annual national championship.

Still, some sports are only in the beginning stages of becoming more diverse. Squash could be one of those sports.

For instance, each of the 18 players on the women's squash team who went to high school in the United States went to a private school. The same is the case from most of the other Ivy League schools.

That does not mean that all squash players are well-off, but some have noted that they generally come from more privileged backgrounds.

"Economically, I think that everyone on the team's really from a privileged background," freshman Alex Heckscher, a member of the men's squash team, said. He noted that few public schools have squash teams, and teammate freshman Jason Harrow mentioned that most of the courts are in private clubs, an institution typically open to well-to-do families.

He also believes that people who play squash are not mostly from such affluent backgrounds.

Princeton lost its tennis and golf hegemony a long time ago. The question remains if the same will happen to sports like lacrosse and squash if they become more socioeconomically diverse.