Little Three
TheLittle Threeis a term started by and used in reference to athletic competition between three privateliberal arts collegesin theNew Englandregion of the United States:Amherst CollegeinAmherst, Massachusetts,Wesleyan UniversityinMiddletown, Connecticut, andWilliams CollegeinWilliamstown, Massachusetts.[1]
The exact origin of the termLittle Threeis lost to history,[1]but was used by the three colleges in an allusion to theBig Three, coined in the 1880s to describe the three big universities—Harvard,Princeton, andYale—which dominated football in theIvy League.[2]Today, the term is used to define Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams as the three prestigious, academically elite original "Little Ivies", crosscutting the Ivy League universities. The earliest known reference appeared in John Hallahan'sFootball in New England Collegesin 1923: "Williams College again won the championship of the Little Three, which includes Wesleyan and Amherst . . ."[1]Little Three championships are contested in 24 sports throughout the academic year.[1]They first joined as theTriangular Leagueathletic conference in 1899, which lasted only three years before breaking up over an argument concerning the eligibility of college baseball players who received pay during summer league play. In 1910, they formed what is believed to be "America’s oldest, continuous intercollegiate athletic conference without a membership change," which earned another moniker, The Triumvirate.[1]
See also
[edit]- The Biggest Little Game in America
- Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium
- New England Small College Athletic Conference
References
[edit]- ^abcde"The Little Three: Williams • Amherst • Wesleyan".williams.edu.Williams College.
- ^Duckworth, Henry Edmison (2000).One Version of the Facts: My Life in the Ivory Tower. Univ. of Manitoba Press. p. 93.ISBN9780887553523. RetrievedJuly 21,2018– via Google Books.
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