On Geyelin's plaque: He chose Red and Blue as the colors for the University and is recognized as the first athlete to wear those colors in competition. The first three-sport athlete at Penn, he was the intercollegiate national champion in the high jump in 1877, and that same spring he tied the existing world record in the 100-yard dash-a mark that held for 11 more years. He was founder of the undergraduate Athletic Association, serving as its President his senior year, and for decades after his graduation served as an officer of the Alumni Athletic Association, including as its President from 1894 until his death in 1921. His many accomplishments during this tenure included spearheading the funding for the building of Franklin Field.
 
 
Fair Harvard has her Crimson
Old Yale her colors too
But for dear Penn-syl-van-I-ah
We wear the Red and Blue
 
Those four lines constitute the middle stanza of "The Red and Blue," penned in 1898 by Harry E. Westervelt and set to music that had been written two years earlier by William J. Goechel.
 
The question is, how did Dear Pennsylvania come to the colors of red and blue for its sporting teams? It's fair to wonder whether Mr. Goechel and Mr. Westervelt knew as they put pen to paper for the music and lyrics of a tune that we still sing more than 125 years later.
 
Chances are they probably did. Because as it turns out the man responsible for Penn's colors was still a very prominent figure on campus at the time.
 
Two years ago, Penn Athletics inducted Margaret Majer Kelly into Hall of Fame Class XII, recognizing her as the founder of women's athletics at the University on the 100th anniversary of their participation in sports on campus. For Hall of Fame Class XIII, Penn Athletics inducts another person whose inclusion into the Hall of Fame is long overdue: Henry Laussat Geyelin, who at the time of his passing in 1921 was recognized as "The Father of Penn Athletics."

First, the story that explains why Friday night's honorees wore red and blue jerseys as athletes and coaches at Penn:
 
On July 15, 1875, Penn planned to participate in a "grand regatta" in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The rowing program was decidedly fledgling at the time and the project was abandoned. However, Mr. Laussat Geyelin—"not to be deterred by the extraordinary record of a man from Cornell, which record thinned woefully the contestants from other colleges"—made the trip to Saratoga on his own to compete in a foot race.
 
"When I made my entry I was asked what colors I would wear," Geyelin (pronounced JAY-lin) recalled to Henry White Andrews for an article written a few years afterward. "In looking over the list of colors, I found that almost all combinations had been selected by other colleges. I then selected red and blue and wore a cap with these colors.
 
"I selected them because they were the colors of the Signal Service and the cap which I wore was the one which was used in the races of the New York Yacht Club. So in the spring of 1876 I had the colors Red and Blue in my mind and often discussed them with other University men in connection with our adopting some colors."
 
Those discussions bore fruit. As the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin would write on May 29, 1942, "Geyelin, on an undergraduate committee that met in the office of a chemistry professor, later provost, the late, beloved Dr. Edgar Fahs Smith, introduced into the sports constitution Article 2 which began, 'The colors of the University shall be Red and Blue.'"
 
Geyelin's participation in Saratoga was lauded in the inaugural issue of the undergraduate The University Magazine, published in November 1875, which wrote the following: "Here we have just exactly the spirit which ought to actuate us. Never mind the prestige of opponents. If you defeat them, their prestige adds glory to your victor's crown; if you are defeated, it hardly increases your sense of defeat. Defeat in itself has no disgrace; the disgrace lies in being satisfied with your mediocrity, and in not striving constantly for superiority. Let us show our friends that we had rather be honorably beaten than not strive, and then they will help us to reach the goal of distinction."
 
The results of that foot race in Saratoga are lost to time. However, Mr. Laussat Geyelin certainly reached levels of distinction during his time as a Penn student.
 
In 1875 he helped found the Athletic Association, serving as its first secretary and as President and Board Chairman as a senior in 1877. The AA sponsored athletic competitions in the fall and spring, and while records of these events are incomplete we do know from digging around University Archives that Geyelin won the 100-yard hurdles at the 1875 spring meet, the 100-yard dash at the 1875 fall meet, and both the 100-yard dash and 100-yard hurdles at the fall 1876 meet.
 
Intercollegiate competition was still in its infancy at this time, but here Geyelin distinguished himself when as a senior he won the Intercollegiate National High Jump as awarded by a nascent organization called the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America—or what our cross country/track friends in the room will recognize as the IC4A. On May 5, 1877, Laussat Geyelin and another Penn student, Horace Lee, tied the existing world record in the 100-yard dash by running it in 10 seconds flat. As such, they would be the first Americans to hold the world record in the event and the mark would hold for 11 years before being broken in 1888.
 
In addition to rowing and running, Laussat Geyelin also competed in a sport that was just getting started at the college level: football. He played on the University's first team, in 1876, a squad that lost a pair of meetings with Princeton but beat an All-Philadelphia team. This makes Laussat Geyelin the University's first three-sport athlete.
 
Laussat Geyelin graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1877 and received the degree of Master of Arts two years later. In 1879 he also received the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the University, having taken up law studies at the end of his college course.
 
His passion for Penn Athletics would never waver.
 
A reconstituted Athletic Association was created in 1883, thanks in large part to Mr. Laussat Geyelin. Alumni members were now incorporated and the group functioned essentially as the University's de facto athletic department into the 20th century. As for Laussat Geyelin, he was an officer and director for the rest of his life, serving as the Association's President from 1894 until his death in July of 1921 at the age of 65.
 
"Every graduate who won his 'P' on an athletic team knew the late fosterer of all things athletic, his acquaintance being perhaps more broad among the amateur sporting world than that of any other person," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer in announcing his passing. "At every meet in Franklin Field and every athletic contest of note, Mr. Geyelin was always to be seen."
 
Three particularly noteworthy things happened during Laussat Geyelin's tenure as the Athletic Association's President: the hiring of Mike Murphy, the building of Franklin Field, and the emergence of Penn as a power in football and men's basketball.
 
One of his first moves as Athletic Association President was to hire Murphy away from Yale to coach Penn's track team. Murphy would coach Penn from 1896-1901 and again from 1905 until his death in 1913 at the tender age of 53. Under his guidance, Penn won ten intercollegiate track & field championships and Penn athletes totaled 32 medals as members of the 1900, 1908 and 1912 Olympic Teams (all of which were coached by Murphy).
 
In 1897, John Bach McMaster and Geyelin published a book titled "The University of Pennsylvania Illustrated, And, A Sketch of Franklin Field." The last nine pages were written by Geyelin as a solicitation for funds to significantly upgrade the athletic fields, which had recently been relocated to 33rd and Spruce. This passion project would continue for the rest of his life; the double-decked Franklin Field that stiil stands today was dedicated in 1922, shortly after his death.
 
(Geyelin continues to be honored today with a massive stone plaque set high up the brick facade in Franklin Field's Southeast corner; you can see it as you approach the stadium from the South Street bridge or from the platform of the SEPTA Penn Medicine stop.)
 
Six of Penn's seven national championships in football came during Geyelin's tenure as Athletic Association President, the first three from 1895-97 and the others in 1904, 1907 and 1908. Men's basketball, meanwhile, won six Eastern Intercollegiate League titles and were declared national champions in both 1919-20 and 1920-21.
 
Laussat Geyelin's influence extended beyond Penn. He helped organize and write the first constitution of the IC4A and he was a member of the Olympic Committee for the 1904 Games contested in St. Louis.
 
However, it was at Penn where his presence was always most prominent.
 
Reporting on the Athletic Association's annual meeting, the December 15, 1914 edition of The Pennsylvanian noted the surprise presentation of a statue—made by R. Tait McKenzie—to Geyelin in appreciation of, at the time, 41 years of service to Penn Athletics. The paper quoted Dr. J. William White's words about Mr. Geyelin:
 
"But, gentlemen, long ago, we at Pennsylvania found the very best in the person of Henry Laussat Geyelin, to whom [in] the name of a large number of ardent admirers, affectionate friends and fellow alumni, I now have the honor of presenting this token, the expression of the artistic genius of a member of our own faculty, and also of our love, respect and appreciation."