page_title: Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The members of the 1903 Pomona College women's basketball team pose for a photograph circa 1903, standing in a line outside of Holmes Hall wearing their uniforms. One student is holding a basketball with "'03" written on it.
context_page_description: Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens is the joint athletics program for Pomona College and Pitzer College, two of the Claremont Colleges. It competes in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference of the NCAA Division III. Its mascot is Cecil the Sagehen. Its primary rival is the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas, the joint team of the three other undergraduate Claremont Colleges.
context_section_description: Pomona College's first intercollegiate sports teams were formed in 1895.
  The college was one of the three founding members of 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. Between 1946 and 1956, Pomona joined with Claremont Men's College (CMC) to compete as Pomona-Claremont. In 1970, Pomona began competing with Pitzer College (then seven years old) on an interim basis, and the arrangement became permanent two years later.
  The Sagehens ranked ninth out of 446 Division III schools and second among SCIAC schools in the 2019–2020 NACDA Directors' Cup Division III Final Fall Standings, which ranks athletic programs and awards points relative to their finish in NCAA Championships. The water polo, track and field, and soccer teams are regarded as particularly strong.
caption: Pomona organized the first women's basketball team in Southern California in 1903.[1]
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