Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, the school expanded. In the 1870s, the first ice hockey games in the U.S. were played on the Lower Pond. During the infancy of ice hockey in the United States, the school established itself as a powerhouse that often played and beat collegiate teams at Harvard and Yale. Its Lower School Pond once held nine hockey rinks. In 1884, it built the first squash courts in America. Both ice hockey and squash were introduced to the school by James Potter Conover, one of the most celebrated athletes of his time in the United States, who had also competed for Columbia during his time as a student there. By 1895, when Coit died, the school had 35 teachers and 345 students.