Pomona–Pitzer Sagehens

For club and intramural sports at the Claremont Colleges, see Claremont Colleges § Athletics.

The Pomona–Pitzer Sagehens are the joint varsity intercollegiate athletic programs for Pomona College and Pitzer College, two of the Claremont Colleges.^[4] It competes with 11 women's and 10 men's teams in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) of the NCAA Division III.

Pomona–Pitzer Sagehens
College	Pomona College Pitzer College
Conference	SCIAC[1]
NCAA	Division III
Athletic director	Miriam Merrill[1]
Location	Claremont, California
Varsity teams	21 (11 women's, 10 men's)
Football stadium	Merritt Field[2]
Basketball arena	Voelkel Gymnasium
Baseball stadium	Alumni Field
Softball stadium	Pomona–Pitzer Softball Field
Soccer stadium	Pomona–Pitzer Soccer Field
Aquatics center	Haldeman Aquatics Center
Lacrosse stadium	South Athletics Complex
Tennis venue	Pauley Tennis Complex
Outdoor track and field venue	Strehle Track
Mascot	Cecil the Sagehen
Nickname	Sagehens
Colors	Blue and orange[3]
Website	sagehens.com
Team NCAA championships
4
Individual and relay NCAA champions
50

Pomona's teams were formed in 1895, and it was a founding member of the SCIAC in 1914. The college competed with Claremont Men's College (CMC) for a decade beginning in 1946, and joined with Pitzer in 1970.

Pomona-Pitzer's mascot is Cecil the Sagehen, a greater sage-grouse. Its primary rival is the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas, the joint team of the three other undergraduate Claremont Colleges.

Sagehens have won 50 individual and four team national championships. Alumni have become Olympic athletes and world record holders in various sports.

Sports

A Pomona-Pitzer football game on Merritt Field

There are 11 women's and 10 men's teams.^[5]

Varsity teams^[5]

Women's	Men's
Basketball	Baseball
Cross country	Basketball
Golf	Cross country
Lacrosse	Football
Soccer	Golf
Softball	Soccer
Swimming and diving	Swimming and diving
Tennis	Tennis
Track and field	Track and field
Volleyball	Water polo
Water polo

History

Pomona College's first intercollegiate sports teams were formed in 1895.^[1] The college was one of the three founding members of the SCIAC in 1914, and its football team played in the inaugural game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1923, losing to the University of Southern California Trojans.^[1] From 1946 to 1956, Pomona joined with Claremont Men's College (CMC) to compete as Pomona-Claremont.^[1] In 1970, Pomona began competing with Pitzer College (then seven years old) on an interim basis, and the arrangement became permanent two years later.^[1]

The Sagehens ranked 15th out of 323 competing Division III schools and 2nd among SCIAC schools in the 2024‍–‍2025 Division III NACDA Directors' Cup, which ranks athletics programs and awards points relative to their finish in NCAA championships.^[6] The water polo, track and field, women's soccer, and women's tennis teams are regarded as particularly strong.^[7]

• Early athletics at Pomona
• 
  Football team, c. 1899
• 
  Pomona organized the first women's basketball team in Southern California in 1903.^[1]
• 
  Football team class of 1907
• 
  Football team in 1911
• 
  Baseball team playing the Boston Red Sox, 1911^[8]
• 
  Track meet, 1912
• 
  Football team playing USC in the inaugural L.A. Coliseum game, 1923

National championships

The Sagehens have won 50 individual NCAA Division III championships: 19 in men's track and field, 12 in women's swimming and diving, 9 in women's tennis, 6 in men's swimming and diving, and 4 in women's track and field.^[9] Additionally, they have won four team titles: women's tennis in 1992, back-to-back titles in men's cross country in 2019 and 2021, and an additional title in men's cross country in 2023.^[9]

Team champshionships

Sport	Year	Opponent/runner-up	Score	Ref.
Women's tennis	1992	Kenyon	5–4	[10]
Men's cross country (3)	2019	North Central (IL)	164–182	[11]
	2021	MIT	80–112	[12]
	2023	Wisconsin–La Crosse	158–159	[13]

Facilities

Pomona-Pitzer's primary indoor athletics facility is the Center for Athletics, Recreation, and Wellness (CARW),^[a] located near the center of Pomona's campus. It was reconstructed and renovated in 2022,^[16] replacing the Liliore Green Rains Center for Sport and Recreation, built in 1989.^[17] The gym is complemented by various outdoor facilities, mostly located within the naturalistic eastern portion of Pomona's campus known as the Wash.^[18]

• Pomona-Pitzer athletics facilities
• 
  Gym main entrance
• 
  Gym north façade at night
• 
  Practice gym
• 
  Gym lobby
• 
  Merritt Field
• 
  Alumni Baseball Field
• 
  Haldeman Aquatics Center

Nickname and mascot

The third iteration of the Cecil the Sagehen costume (adopted in 2017^[19]) dabbing

A male sagehen with its gular sacs inflated during a courtship ritual

The official mascot of the team is Cecil the Sagehen, a greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus).^[20][21] The bird is a large ground-dweller native to the western United States (although not Southern California), and is distinguished by its long, pointed tail and complex lek mating system. It is named after the sagebrush on which it feeds.^[22]

Pomona-Pitzer is the only team in the world to use the Sagehen as a mascot,^[23] and it is often noted for its goofiness.^[24][25] Rather than in the grouse's natural brown and white colors, the mascot is rendered in the team's official colors, blue (for Pomona) and orange (for Pitzer).^[26]

The precise origin of the nickname is unknown. Pomona competed under a variety of names in its early years, including "the Blue and White" and "the Huns".^[1] The first known appearance of "Sagehens" was in a 1913 issue of The Student Life newspaper, and in 1918 it became the sole nickname.^[20] Later Pomona-Claremont began using it, and it is now the nickname for the combined Pomona-Pitzer team. The first known reference to "Cecil" was made in the 1946 Metate (Pomona's yearbook).^[20]

Rivalry

The Sagehens' primary rival is the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas, the joint team of the three other undergraduate Claremont Colleges.^[27][28] The rivalry is known as the Sixth Street Rivalry,^[29] referring to the street that separates the teams' athletics facilities.^[30] Historically, Pomona had a rivalry with the Occidental College Tigers.^[23][30]

Notable athletes

This section is an excerpt from List of Pomona College people § Athletics.[edit]

NBA Championship head coach of the San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich coached the Pomona men's basketball team from 1979 to 1987.^[31][32]

Pomona athletes

Name	Class year	Notability	Ref.
Harry Kingman	1913	Pitcher for the New York Yankees	[33]
Charles Daggs	1923	Olympic track and field athlete	[34]
Robert Maxwell	1925	Olympic hurdler and two-time national champion	[35]
Earl J. Merritt	1925	Head football coach of the Sagehens from 1935 to 1958	[36][37]
David G. Freeman	1942	Seven-time U.S. national badminton champion	[38][39]
Betty Hicks	1947	Golfer, 1941 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year	[40]
Darlene Hard	1961	Grand Slam–winning tennis player	[41]
Marilyn Ramenofsky	1969	Olympic silver medalist swimmer, and former women's 400-meter freestyle world record holder	[42]
Penny Lee Dean	1977	Long-distance swimmer and world record-holder for the fastest swim across the English Channel in 1978; later coached the Pomona women's swimming and diving team for more than 25 years	[43][44][45]
Mike Budenholzer	1992	Head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks, and Phoenix Suns	[46][47]
Will Leer	2007	Professional track and field athlete specializing in the 1500 meters	[48]
Andrew Palmer (racing driver)	2014	American Racing Driver	[49]
Daniel Rosenbaum	2019	Professional basketball player in the Israeli National League	[50]

For Pitzer athletes, see List of Pitzer College people.

Notes

1. The acronym "CARW" is seldom used by students, who instead refer to the gym generically. Some have proposed rearranging the letters to form the more pronounceable "CRAW".^[14][15]