Haverford Fords
The Haverford Fords are the athletic teams Haverford College, who compete at the NCAA Division III level in the Centennial Conference. Haverford boasts the only varsity cricket team in the United States. Its men's and women's track and field and cross country teams are perennial powerhouses in their division. The outdoor track and field team won the first 16 Centennial Conference championships, and men's cross country has won all but two Centennial Conference championships. The soccer team is among the nation's oldest, having won its first intercollegiate match in 1905 against Harvard College. The lacrosse team has placed well nationally in the NCAA championships, while Haverford's fencing team has competed since the early 1930s.
Athletic teams
Baseball
The New York Times called Haverford a pipeline to a front-office career in professional baseball, with a focus on sabermetrics. As of summer 2015, it notes, "there are about 15 to 20 Haverford graduates working in prominent baseball-related jobs, as front-office executives, agents and talent evaluators." The current head coach is Dave Beccaria, an alumnus of and former junior varsity head coach at Johns Hopkins.Basketball
[file:Haverford College Bulletin, New Series, 17-18, 1917-1920 (1920) (14740131896).jpg|thumb|left|Basketball team c. 1920]The first intercollegiate basketball game played east of the Mississippi River occurred in Ryan Gym in 1895 between Haverford and Temple University. A former varsity star is Hunter R. Rawlings III, the former president of Cornell University.
Cricket
Haverford boasts the only varsity cricket team in the United States, and ESPN Magazine has called Haverford "the epicenter of Philadelphia's cricket craze". The team, which was started in 1833, is generally accepted as the first cricket club exclusively for Americans. Haverford has a strong rivalry with the University of Pennsylvania's club team.The first match in this series was played in 1864 and has been believed to be the third-oldest intercollegiate contest in America, after the 1852 Harvard-Yale crew and 1859 Amherst-Williams baseball matches. The Intercollegiate Cricket Association existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Haverford won its championship 19 times, 1892, 1893, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1910, 1915, 1916, 1919, 1922. Haverford's current team has a heavy contingent of students of South Asian heritage, and the XI team regularly travels to Oxbridge for games. The current coach is Kamran Khan, former player for the United States national cricket team from 1979 to 1990 and President of the United States of America Cricket Association from 1999 to 2000. He has coached Haverford's cricket team since 1974.
Fencing
The fencing team has competed since the early 1930s and is a member of both the Middle Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association and the National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association. Recently retired coach, David Littell, fenced in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. In 2007, the Haverford fencing team fenced an undefeated MACFA season and won its third championship. Other championships were won in 1983 and 2004. The current Haverford coach is Chris Spencer, formerly head coach of Mount Holyoke College. Under Spencer the Haverford team has become a top Division III program, defeating Division I teams such as New York University and UNC. Haverford won three consecutive MACFA championships in 2010-2012.Football
Haverford used to have a football team, starting in 1879. The team was rivals with Swarthmore.Lacrosse
The Haverford men's lacrosse team has fallen from its national power status. After defeating Gettysburg College in 2009 and 2010, qualifying for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 NCAA tournaments, advancing to the 2010 NCAA tournament quarterfinals and registering other high profile wins, the team has in recent years struggled. The current head coach is Nick Taylor who has been at the helm for three seasons. Former head coach Brendan Dawson is now the head coach of the Haverford School. Former head coach Colin Bathory is an alumnus of the College. Former head coach Mike Murphy is now the head coach of the Penn Quakers men's lacrosse.Soccer
Haverford's soccer team, the nation's oldest, won the first match of the newly-formed Intercollegiate Soccer Football League in 1905, beating Harvard College. It is of interest that Harvard's team was founded by a Haverford alumnus during his graduate education there. Haverford soccer squads were named national intercollegiate champions three times by the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association in 1911, 1915 and 1917.This was well prior to the NCAA's inaugural post-season national championship tournament, which began in 1959. The men's soccer team won its first NCAA playoff game in 1980, defeating Elizabethtown College 4-3. In 2013, both the men's and women's soccer teams were crowned Centennial Conference Champions. While the men's team defeated Wesleyan College in the first round of the 2013 NCAA tournament, the women's team lost to MIT in the first round. The 2015 season was the most successful in the history of Haverford men's soccer, as the team won the Centennial Conference championship and advanced to the NCAA playoff's Elite Eight.