A century ago a team of administrators at Pomona launched a second school next door and named it the Graduate School of Claremont Colleges. Now known as Claremont Graduate University, it kickstarted the birth of the consortium and a completely new era for Pomona—and sports were no exception. Here’s a brief timeline of athletics at the Claremont Colleges.

Pomona’s track team, 1911

1895: Pomona forms teams in football, baseball and track to compete against other West Coast institutions. For more than 50 years Pomona uses multiple nicknames interchangeably, including the Sage Hens, the Huns, and the “Blue and White.”

One of Pomona’s first women’s basketball teams

1903: Pomona introduces the sport of women’s basketball to Southern California colleges with the region’s first team, three full years before the formation of the men’s team

1914: Pomona becomes a founding member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC).

1946: Pomona starts competing with the new “Claremont Men’s College” (now CMC) as the Pomona-Claremont Sagehens.

1958: Claremont Men’s College separates from Pomona athletically, combining with Harvey Mudd College to become the “Claremont-Mudd Stags.”

Pomona-Pitzer and CMS face off on the basketball court

1970: Pomona joins with Pitzer to become the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens.

1976: SCIAC starts sponsoring women’s sports, leading Scripps to join Claremont-Mudd to become Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, with the nickname of the Athenas for women’s teams.

A grant enabling a three-year extension in a project from Associate Chemistry Professor Nicholas Ball to develop new methods to introduce key structural motifs into bioactive molecules relevant to public health. Ball is leading research collaborators Maduka Ogba at Harvey Mudd College and Christopher am Ende at Pfizer Inc. and Connecticut College.

“The discovery of new and better drugs to treat disease is incredibly important,” Ball says. “Our contribution is to find more efficient ways to build molecules that could have the potential to heal through synthetic chemistry.” ($428,024 from the National Institutes of Health)

Physics Professor Richard Mawhorter’s project employs experimental approaches to move beyond the standard model of physics through the precision measurement of molecules cooled to ultracold temperatures. He will conduct the project in conjunction with Emory University Professor Michael Heaven, who is also receiving NSF funding.

“We are looking forward to working side-by-side with Emory graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to study the hyperfine energy level structure and bonding patterns of simple molecules containing the rare earth element ytterbium (Yb),” Mawhorter
says. ($150,978 from the National Science Foundation)

Geology Professor Jade Star Lackey’s project—a collaboration with researchers at Florida State University—focuses on high-pressure and high-temperature decarbonation of marble and calc-silicate rocks that have been exposed by erosion into the deep lower crust of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“The work [gets] at the core question of how much carbon dioxide is naturally driven from Earth’s crust when Earth’s magmatic activity flares up,” Lackey says. “The Cretaceous magmas ‘baked’ carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere and caused natural global warming. We’re studying what that ‘baking’ process looked like in the deepest levels of the Sierra Nevada.” ($86,902 from the National
Science Foundation)

Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Konrad Aguilar’s grant supported the 2025 edition of the West Coast Operator Algebras Symposium (WCOAS), which was held in December at Pomona. The conference showcased current trends in operator algebra theory and applications to other fields, including ergodic theory, number theory, representation theory and mathematical physics.

The WCOAS had been on hiatus since 2019, and Aguilar says that it is “meant to present the state-of-the-art of Operator Algebras and bring in researchers from many career levels to foster collaboration and new connections with other fields.” ($16,000 from the National Science Foundation)

On Facebook this fall, we asked alums to share about a Pomona memento that they still have, that gives them a little mood-boost whenever they see it. Roughly 80 of you posted comments and ideas on the thread. Here are a few of the highlights!

Discover more on our Pomona Facebook group.

“I just earned my 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo. I really have to focus, but I also have to ‘let go’ to some extent. It’s a real connection to Self, and to others.”

—Debbie (Pieper) Fulmer ’93

“I enjoy dancing Filipino dances with my daughter. I enjoy teaching my culture to the next generation.”

—Janelle Tangonan Anderson ’93

“I finished my first Ironman with Eunice Kim Moon ’91! (Why is she showered and changed while I’m sweaty and gross? Because she finished waaay ahead of me.)”

—Sam Thomas ’91

“Escape rooms! They’re all about immersion – the story, sets, challenges, hands-on elements, surprises, communication, and time pressure all keep me fully immersed and focused.”

—Krista Jones ’99

“Birdwatching gets me out of the house and away from screens. I came to it from photography, and as I gravitated towards it, I found so much more than just getting that ‘perfect shot’: when you want to find birds, listening is at least as important as seeing them.”

—Jeremy Frank ’90

For me, what’s most immersive about oil painting is getting into the details with the contours of human heads and bodies, and especially the intense colors that are at my disposal.

—Phil Freyder II, ’68

On Facebook, we asked alums about their favorite photo they ever took of something on campus. Here were a few of the responses!

A shot atop a tree on Marston Quad, by Samuel Breslow ’18