Cornell Sprint Football is one of the oldest, most winning and best-funded varsity sports on campus, having started in 1936 when it was originally known as 150 lb. football. We have always had a great coaching staff who make it fun to play football at Cornell. Over the years, the weight classification has slowly increased to match the average size of the typical male college student. Sprint football provides a tremendous opportunity to play at the collegiate level.
The Collegiate Sprint Football League is incredibly competitive and many freshmen thought it’s going to be easy because of the weight class. We usually had over a hundred players go out for our team and once the pads came on, the physicality was very evident. I remember the first time I played against Army, those players all looked like they could bench press a bus. Though we all weighed the same, they were incredibly intimidating. Even football players who would come over to our team from the heavyweight varsity are surprised by the speed and physicality of the CSFL.
One of the biggest challenges with Collegiate Sprint Football is that most high school coaches and players have never even heard of our league. That said, many athletes are already familiar with weight classifications in football through Pop Warner or other youth football leagues. I played Pop Warner football on the lighter weight B-squad as my bigger neighbor — who went on to play Ivy League football at Princeton — played on the heavier A-squad. In addition, many other sports like crew, wrestling and boxing are divided by weight classifications. Given the opportunity, there’s reason to think that many high school players would love to play college Sprint Football.
What’s great about sprint football is that it’s one of the few remaining “walk-on” sports on campus. If you’re interested in playing sprint football, simply walk into the beautiful Schoellkopf Hall and it’s the first office on the left. In order to reduce costs, the CSFL does not allow formal recruiting. While some of our players have been referrals from high school coaches and alumni, many others come from other Cornell sports teams like varsity football, lacrosse, wrestling, baseball, rugby and track. Some of our players never even played football in high school. For example, Cornell had a recent lacrosse player move over to sprint football and he was a natural at wide receiver.
The key factor for holding to the weight limit and winning at sprint football is an absolute commitment to conditioning. We ran wind sprints at the end of practice and before each interval — our team would yell “Beat Army” or “Beat Penn”, whoever we were playing that week — but Army and Navy always got the most intensity, since our team was beat by Army at the conclusion of my freshman season. After that loss I remember some of the upper-classmen saying we needed to really improve our conditioning in order to compete with the military academies who have always been the “Benchmark” of our league.
One thing we learned from Army and Navy was the idea of having a “Big Motor,” meaning cadets constantly on the move with endurance activities. Also agility was key, whether it comes in the form of skipping rope or playing a pick-up basketball game. After all, there’s a reason why it’s called sprint football as speed is so important in this league. Finally, power is so important in the game of football. When I was playing several of our lineman could bench press 300 lbs. and weight training is vital to playing this game. Cornell Sprint Football can win another league championship, but the team must commit to the off-season conditioning program. The good news is that most of our alumni will tell you the conditioning was fun and we were in the best shape of our lives!
I still remember my first day at Cornell during orientation week. My mother helped me move into my dorm room, we picked up my new student ID/dining card and then she dropped me off at Schoellkopf Field for my first sprint football practice. Soon after I was assigned to the defensive scout team. Since everyone weighed about the same, I played nearly every position on defense throughout my freshman year, which was a lot of fun. After freshman year, I moved to offensive guard, where I stayed until graduation. I can still hear our locker room boom box playing the Rocky theme song and “We are the Champions.” Despite the time commitment, our sprint players have maintained excellent academic records; moreover, many of our alumni have moved onto very successful careers and have been significant financial donors back to Cornell. Of course, we still managed to party as well, so it was not all work and no play. For me, playing on an undefeated football team my senior year was the icing on the cake. I’d love for more generations of Cornell students to have the wonderful experiences with sprint football that I did.
Mark Wolcott ’83 is an active Cornell alum who has served on the Cornell Council and volunteers as a Class Representative program for Big Red Sprint Football. He has spent his career in Commercial Banking.
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