Stoll Field

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Given to the University of Kentucky by the class of 2007, Historical Marker #2262 commemorates Stoll Field. The field was the site of the first intercollegiate game ever played south of the Mason-Dixon Line on April 9, 1880. Kentucky University (now known as Transylvania University) defeated Centre College 13¾ to 0. The game was said to have resembled a combination of soccer and rugby. A&M College of Kentucky (now UK) did not play its first game on the field until a year later. The field also served as a pasture for UK president James Patterson’s cows and for military training during World War I.

The name Stoll Field was given to the grounds in 1908 in recognition of Judge Richard G. Stoll, a student and athlete and later an alumnus and trustee of the University of Kentucky. It was officially dedicated to him in 1916. After thirty-four seasons on the first field, the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky met on October 4, 1924 to inaugurate the new Stoll Field, with the Wildcats winning 29-0. That same year, a new stadium was built and named McLean Stadium to honor Price Innis McLean. McLean, a twenty-year-old engineering student and the center on the 1923 team, died on November 7, 1923 as a result of injuries sustained in the UK-Cincinnati game played in Cincinnati the afternoon before.

Stoll Field was the center of sporting events and campus activities until Commonwealth Stadium opened in 1973.

The UK Senior Challenge Historical Marker Project, administered by the Kentucky Historical Society, began in 1994 as a way for the graduating senior class to leave a memorial to the university. Every year since then, the UK historical marker committee has decided on the topic, raised the money, and written the text for the markers.