Formative Years

The Formative Years (1909 - 1921) is the second era of the unofficial interhall football chronology. The era begins in 1909 with the first season schedule organized under a round-robin tournament structure. It ends in 1921, which was the final year of competition before divisions and the interhall championship game was introduced.

The era encompasses the primordial years of organized interhall football, as the league expanded from four to seven active teams and the number of official games played exploded. New additions to interhall culture included the All-Interhall teams, championship trophies, and full season rundowns published in the Dome Yearbook. Halls typically fielded just a single team to represent them in competition, and that team was trained and managed by a coach appointed by the university's athletic board.

While the representative interhall squads flourished, the popularity of interclass, club, picked, and other intramural campus football teams markedly declined. The Ex-Carrollites team, arguably the most successful of the minor squads, played its last game against Brownson Hall in 1917. Various interhall "chick" teams popped up throughout the era to challenge certain rules implimented by the official interhall league, but these squads came and went with the season and disappeared altogether by World War I.

The most successful team during the era was Corby Hall, which was recognized by the Notre Dame RecSports department as the first campus dynasty. Corby won three straight titles (1909 - 1911) in the first three years of The Formative Era and went on to win an additional three championships (1916, 1919 - 1920) before the era concluded. Of the seven teams who competed, only old Carroll Hall and the Off-Campus team, both established in 1920, did not win a title.

Teams

Established

• Walsh Hall - 1909

• Badin Hall - 1917 - hall established 1897 as St. Joseph

• Old Carroll Hall - 1920 - first year as undergraduate dormitory

• The Off-Campus team - 1920

Disbanded

• St. Joseph Hall Manual Labor School - 1916 - replaced by Badin Hall, an undergraduate dormitory