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The University of Washington is known, in addition to its prestige as a research institution, for its top-tier athletic teams. Many of these teams can boast pedigrees going back well over a century, and have become integral to life on campus and alumni engagement. The football team played its first season in 1889, the same year that much of Seattle was destroyed by a fire. A decade later, in 1899, University of Washington students began working with local donors to develop a rowing crew program for the school, work that would come to fruition in 1903 with the first intercollegiate rowing race on the West Coast, in which the University of Washington bested the University of California.

In the same year that the men’s crew team enjoyed their inaugural victory, UW women were taking to Lake Washington informally to pursue the sport on their own. Over the next few years, this “women’s rowing club” would steadily gain prominence and acclaim on campus, ultimately finding a patron and advocate in Hiram Conibear, the athletic trainer for the football and track teams and coach of the men’s crew team. On October 22nd, 1907, women’s rowing made the leap from hobbyist clique to a university-sanctioned athletics team. The women’s crew team competed for a decade until the death of Conibear and the appropriation of campus aquatic facilities by the Navy during World War One forced the team to disband. Although several efforts were made to revive the women’s crew team over the subsequent decades, women would not compete again in rowing at the University of Washington until 1969.

For their part, the 1908 University of Washington football team enjoyed a successful season, going undefeated in seven games under the guidance of a new coach, Gil Dobie. The closest the team came to a loss that particular season was a tie-game, six to six, against Washington State University in the annual rivalry match that has come to be known as the Apple Cup.