Stanford Cardinal
The Stanford Cardinal are the athletic teams that represent Stanford University. Stanford's program has won 137 NCAA team championships, the most of any university. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 49 consecutive years, starting in 1976–77 and continuing through 2024–25. Through July 2025, Stanford athletes have won 565 individual NCAA titles.
Stanford has won 26 of the 31 NACDA Directors' Cups, awarded annually to the most successful overall college sports program in the nation, including 25 consecutive Cups from 1994–95 through 2018–19. 177 Stanford-affiliated athletes have won a total of 335 Summer Olympic medals, including 39 medals at the 2024 Paris games.
Stanford's teams compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Nickname and mascot history
A brighter Cardinal red was chosen as Stanford's official color by an assembly of the university's first students in 1891. White was adopted as a secondary color in the 1940s.Following Stanford's win over California in the first-ever Big Game on March 19, 1892, the team was metonymically referred to as the "Cardinal" by sportswriters in the next day's San Francisco Chronicle. The university's athletic teams continued to be referred to as the "Cardinal" or "Cardinals" even after the adoption of the "Indians" name.
On November 25, 1930, following a unanimous vote by the Executive Committee for the Associated Students, the athletic department adopted the mascot "Indian".
On March 3, 1972, a few months after the football team's second straight win in the Rose Bowl, the Indian symbol and name were dropped by Stanford president Richard Lyman after objections from Native American students and a vote by the student senate.
From 1972 to 1981, the official nickname returned to "Cardinals", a reference to the color, not the bird. During the 1970s, a number of suggestions were put forth as possible nicknames: Robber Barons, Sequoias, Trees, Railroaders, Spikes, Huns and Griffins. The last suggestion gained enough momentum to prompt the athletics department to move two griffin statues from the site of the former Stanford Home for Convalescent Children to near the athletic facilities.
On November 17, 1981, school president Donald Kennedy declared that the athletic teams be represented by the color cardinal in its singular form.
Stanford has no official mascot, but the Stanford Tree, a member of the Stanford Band wearing a self-designed tree costume, appears at major Stanford sports events. The Tree is based on El Palo Alto, a redwood tree in neighboring Palo Alto that appears in the Stanford seal and athletics logo.
Sports sponsored
Stanford University sponsors 36 varsity sports teams — 15 men's, 19 women's, and two coed sports — competing primarily in the NCAA Division I and the Atlantic Coast Conference, with the primary affiliation recently changed from the Pac-12 Conference.Among sports not sponsored by the ACC, men's rowing and women's lightweight rowing compete in the Intercollegiate Rowing Association; men's gymnastics, men's volleyball, beach volleyball, and men's and women's water polo all compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation ; sailing in the Intercollegiate Sailing Association; squash in the College Squash Association; and artistic swimming under the sport's US governing body of USA Synchro.
In July 2020, due to increased financial constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford Athletics announced they will be eliminating 11 varsity teams after the conclusion of the 2020–21 academic year: men's and women's fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men's rowing, co-ed and women's sailing, squash, artistic swimming, men's volleyball and wrestling. These planned cuts were canceled in May 2021.
Football
Basketball
Baseball
The Cardinal have appeared in the NCAA Division I baseball tournament 35 times, and have appeared in the College World Series 19 times. They have won two National Championships, in 1987 and 1988.Field Hockey
Men's golf
The men's golf team has won eight NCAA Championships: 1939, 1941, 1942, 1946, 1953, 1994, 2007, 2019. They have crowned three individual national champions: Sandy Tatum, Tiger Woods, and Cameron Wilson. They have won 12 Pac-12 Conference championships: 1960, 1968, 1970, 1974, 1977, 1992, 1994, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2023. Other notable players include Tom Watson, Bob Rosburg, NFL quarterback John Brodie, and Notah Begay III.Women's golf
Stanford golfers have won individual golf championships four times. In 1971, Shelley Hamlin won the women's national intercollegiate individual golf championship. More recently, Stanford golfers won individual NCAA titles three years in a row: Rachel Heck in 2021, Rose Zhang in 2022, and Rose Zhang again in 2023. Zhang is the only woman who has ever won two NCAA individual titles.Stanford has won the NCAA team championship three times: in 2015, 2022, and 2024. From 2015 to the present, the championship has been determined by match play. Stanford is the only team to reach the match play portion of the championship every year it has been offered.
Sailing
Stanford Sailing has won the following Intercollegiate Sailing Association championship events:- the ICSA Open Fleet Race Championship in 2023 and 2025
- the ICSA Open Team Race Championship in 1997
- the ICSA Women's Fleet Race Championship in 2023, 2024, and 2025
- the ICSA Women's Team Race Championship in 2024 and 2025
- the ICSA Men's Singlehanded Championship in 1963, 2006, and 2022
- the ICSA Women's Singlehanded Championship in 2000 and 2018
In March 2019, John Vandemoer, Stanford University's head sailing coach for 11 years, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering for accepting bribes in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, to hold open admission spots at the university for three applicants falsely portrayed as competitive sailors, in exchange for $770,000 in payments to the sailing program. Unlike others indicted in the scheme, he did not personally benefit financially. The university fired Vandemoer. Clinton Hayes was appointed interim head coach.
Men's soccer
The Cardinal have appeared in the NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Tournament 20 times, including in 8 consecutive years from 2013 through 2020. They have seven appearances in the College Cup, winning the national championship in 2015, 2016, and 2017.Women's soccer
The Cardinal won the NCAA women's soccer championship in 2011, 2017, and 2019.Softball
The Cardinal softball team has appeared in four Women's College World Series, in 2001, 2004, 2023, and 2024. The Cardinal program was the co-champions of the PAC-10 conference in 2005, which is their only conference championship. The current head softball coach of the Stanford program is Jessica Allister.Men's tennis
The Cardinal have won 17 NCAA Men's tennis championships: 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2000.Women's tennis
The Cardinal have won 20 of the 43 NCAA women's tennis team championships that have taken place, winning in 1982, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2019. Stanford also won the 1978 women's tennis championship, awarded by the AIAW. 2023 was the first year in which Stanford held fewer than half of the NCAA team championships ever awarded.Stanford tennis players have won the individual singles championship many times:
| Years | Player | Organiser |
| 1964 | Jane Albert | AIAW |
| 1979 | Kathy Jordan | AIAW |
| 1982 | Alycia Moulton | NCAA |
| 1985 | Linda Gates | NCAA |
| 1986 and 1987 | Patty Fendick | NCAA |
| 1989 | Sandra Birch | NCAA |
| 1990 | Debbie Graham | NCAA |
| 1991 | Sandra Birch | NCAA |
| 1997 | Lilia Osterloh | NCAA |
| 2000 and 2001 | Laura Granville | NCAA |
| 2003 and 2004 | Amber Liu | NCAA |
| 2012 and 2013 | Nicole Gibbs | NCAA |
Stanford tennis players have also won the doubles championship many times:
| Years | Players | Organiser |
| 1962 | Linda Yeomans and Carol Hanks | AIAW |
| 1967 | Jane Albert and Julie Anthony | AIAW |
| 1976 and 1977 | Susie Hagey and Diane Morrison | AIAW |
| 1978 | Barbara Jordan and Kathy Jordan | AIAW |
| 1979 | Kathy Jordan and Alycia Moulton | AIAW |
| 1981 | Caryn Copeland and Alycia Moulton | AIAW |
| 1984 | Linda Gates and Elise Burgin | NCAA |
| 1985 | Linda Gates and Leigh-Anne Eldredge | NCAA |
| 1990 | Meredith McGrath and Teri Whitlinger | NCAA |
| 2002 | Lauren Kalvaria and Gabriela Lastra | NCAA |
| 2005 | Alice Barnes and Erin Burdette | NCAA |
| 2010 | Hilary Barte and Lindsay Burdette | NCAA |
| 2011 | Hilary Barte and Mallory Burdette | NCAA |
| 2012 | Mallory Burdette and Nicole Gibbs | NCAA |