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Starting Out Small Although basketball hoops were no longer made from bushel baskets, backboards were still made out of boards in 1915, when the Co-operative Engineering School fielded the first athletic team at the school that soon afterwards would be named Northeastern. Coached by assistant dean of engineering Carl S. Ell (who later became N.U.'s second president), the Engineers on Huntington Avenue-Engineers, for short-compiled a 5-3 record in their 1915­16 campaign, including two victories over Boston University by scores of 12-9 and 11-8. The team's captain was Clarke Harding, seen here holding a rather leaden-looking ball. Its leading scorer, forward Erving Clough (bottom row, second from left), averaged 9.25 points per contest, which earned him election the following year as the squad's new captain. Fortunately for the already hard-working Ell, a college basketball coach's duties didn't extend to recruiting in those days. As the Co-op, the engineering school's student newspaper, would announce in preparation for the 1916­17 season, "All students who have had any previous basket ball [sic] experience should leave their names with Captain Clough or Mr. Harding."