Theme

Carolina Sports

Pep rallies, rivalries, and championships: the games and athletes that made Chapel Hill a sports town.

In briefChapel Hill became a sports town through the university: the 1957 and 1982 basketball championships, the women’s soccer dynasty from 1981, the 1994 women’s basketball title, and the rivalries and pep rallies around them. Hillsborough had its own arena in the Occoneechee Speedway, a stock-car track from 1947 to 1968.

1,024 works about Carolina Sports are indexed here. 16 held at OCPL →

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Events and storylines

Named events and storylines the index follows in detail. Each has its own page.

Occoneechee Speedway, HillsboroughNASCAR’s early dirt track on the Eno, 1949–1968; not the Orange County Speedway in Rougemont UNC women’s soccer national dynastyTwenty-three national championships won in Chapel Hill, from the 1981 AIAW title under Anson Dorrance to the 2024 NCAA title under Damon Nahas UNC national championships beyond women’s soccerThe national titles won by Carolina teams other than women’s soccer, from the 1924 basketball team’s later Helms recognition and the 1957 NCAA title to the field hockey, lacrosse, men’s soccer and tennis championships The fight over Sunday racing, 1956–1958How ministers and their allies set out to stop Sunday stock car races at Orange Speedway and a new jalopy track, the county commissioners’ changing stand, the 1957 act of the legislature and the courts that first upheld it and then struck it down Kenan Memorial Stadium, 1926–1988How Kenan Memorial Stadium was built: William R. Kenan Jr.’s gift, the trustees’ choice of the ravine site, the town’s complaints about blasting, the concrete stands, Kenan’s added $28,000, and the opening game and Thanksgiving Day dedication of 1927 Woollen Gymnasium, the Bowman Gray Pool and the first women’s dormitories, 1935–1941How the University built its new gymnasium, the Bowman Gray pool and its first dormitory for women with a PWA grant: the 1936 grant, the work begun in 1937, the presentation of the gymnasium, the pool’s opening and the naming for Charles T. Woollen

Show all 12 events and storylines

The University’s new athletic field, 1933–1936The University’s new athletic field on the Raleigh road, graded by Civil Works crews in the winter of 1933-34, finished with relief labor in 1935 after a halt in Emergency Relief work, and dedicated as Fetzer Field in May 1936 The Graham Plan dispute, 1936The 1936 dispute over President Frank P. Graham’s Southern Conference eligibility rules: the trustees’ referral to the faculties, the Chapel Hill faculty’s 80 to 40 vote to approve them, and Carl Snavely’s departure for Cornell that spring The 1939 law ending University merchandisingHow a 1939 state law forbidding the University to sell merchandise in competition with citizens moved its coal and appliance trade to Bennett and Blocksidge, with their new Carrboro coal yard, and the Carolina Sports Shop John Kenfield opened that fall A football player’s death and the reform of UNC athletics, 1971–1972How a varsity football player’s death from heat stroke in 1971 led to changes in UNC athletics: the faculty inquiry and the former players’ challenge to it, Chancellor Sitterson’s order for physicians at practices, the Faculty Council’s athletics report and the Sports Medicine Program of 1972 Building and opening the Dean E. Smith Center, 1978–1989How UNC built its Student Activities Center between 1978 and 1984: the arena plan for the Baity land, the 1980 approvals by the trustees and the Town Council, the gift and loan that paid for it, the 1982 student seating fight, and the reviews of its steel and cracked beams in 1983 and 1984 UNC and the state budget cuts, 1989–1991How the state’s budget cuts reached UNC between 1989 and 1991: the 1989 deficit and Student Congress’s loan offer, the 1990 cuts and hiring freeze, the protests and Save UNC Day, Hardin’s decision against layoffs, the 1991 section cuts and graduate students’ demands, the Carolina Inn decision and the budget flexibility the campus won

More storylines

Other storylines that include this theme, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineCarolina athletics from the ban to the undefeated 1898 team, 1888–19021888–1902 · 13 events · Carolina athletics began with a fight over whether to play at all: organized football started at the university in 1888, and by 1890 the trustees had forbidden intercollegiate contests altogether. A student petition won repeal by January 1891, and that April the football and baseball associations united as the Athletic Association. The 1892 team lost only to Virginia and then beat Virginia in a rematch at Atlanta. In 1895 the association hired Princeton's Thomas G. Trenchard, whose team won seven games before losing to Virginia. After a disorderly fall term the faculty in 1896 barred students on probation from the teams and made players pledge not to drink or gamble on trips. The 1898 team was undefeated and untied. StorylineThe University builds under Venable, 1900–19091900–1909 · 19 events · Under Francis P. Venable, elected president in 1900, the University spent a decade building. Julian S. Carr paid for the Carr Building, a dormitory, and in 1900-01 the University finished its water works, sewer system and heating plant and completed the Alumni Building and the Mary Ann Smith Dormitory. After Professor Charles Baskerville described the crowded chemistry laboratories, the legislature in 1905 gave $50,000 for a chemical laboratory, finished in 1906. Judge William Preston Bynum gave a gymnasium, and the trustees agreed to buy the University Inn for dormitories. A new president's house, an infirmary and the YMCA building followed in 1907, Davie Hall opened in 1908, and in 1909 Gerrard Hall was refitted so that daily chapel could resume. StorylineWomen students at the University, 1914–19211914–1921 · 8 events · Women were registered in every department and professional school of the University by the fall of 1916, and by 1921 they had two houses of their own. Cora Zeta Corpening enrolled in 1914 as what Covington's history calls the first woman candidate for a medical degree, and Margaret Berry of Hillsborough graduated from the law school in 1915, the first woman to do so according to the guide to her papers. In 1916 the News called the women's registration in all departments a first, and they organized a co-ed club. In 1921, after years of pleas from adviser Inez Stacy, the university gave women two houses, room for about forty-five of the sixty-five enrolled. StorylineThe Sorrell building theatre: Carolina, Village and Varsity, 1927–19801927–1980 · 10 events · W. B. Sorrell's building on the north side of Franklin Street opened in 1927 with the Carolina Theatre between his optometry shop and Jeff's Campus Confectionery. The theatre became the Village in 1942, when a new Carolina opened across the street, and the Varsity in 1951. After pickets in 1961 it agreed to admit Black University students. Fire gutted it in November 1966, and it reopened in September 1967. StorylineThe Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945May 1942–October 1945 · 92 events · Commissioned at UNC in May 1942, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School trained 18,700 cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945. Cadets ate in Lenoir Hall and drilled in a Navy-built armory that opened in 1943. George H. W. Bush trained there as a cadet, Gerald Ford taught there, and Ted Williams played on its baseball team. StorylineAthletics reform and drug testing at UNC, 1989–19901989–1990 · 6 events · In December 1989 a Faculty Council committee chaired by Doris Betts called for sweeping changes in UNC athletics, and the council took up its 32 recommendations early in 1990, passing the last 11 in February in a package Chancellor Paul Hardin called historic. That June the trustees declined to make drug testing of athletes mandatory, but the Board of Governors refused to exempt the campus, and UNC began mandatory testing in November 1990.

Indexed works

Works about Carolina Sports from library and archive catalogs. The most widely held appear first; novels are not shown here. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Filter these works by material, period, or place. Counts refer to works, not individual copies. A work may appear under more than one period or place.

Material

Photographs & portraits 374 Periodicals 114 Histories 106 Biography 88 Pictorial works 28other types 109

Period

19th century 22 Civil War (1861–1865) 1 20th century 299 World War I era 3 World War II era 7 21st century 12

Place

Orange County 301 North Carolina (statewide) 238 Chapel Hill 106 City of Durham (neighboring) 6 Hillsborough 4 Carrboro 2

Widely held

Carolina Basketball: A Century of Excellence

Lucas, Adam · 2010 · University of North Carolina Press

Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 pages.