The RPI Engineers are composed of 21 teams representing Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in intercollegiate athletics, including men and women's basketball, cross country, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, swimming & diving, tennis, and track and field.

[2] The school's teams were originally nicknamed the "Fighting Engineers" in 1925, likely by a student writing for the paper, and called so due to the energy of the players.

[7] The Olympic Sports committee does not list lacrosse as an official event, so these games were considered exhibition matches.

Recently RPI men's lacrosse continues the tradition of the 1948 team by being one of the top division III schools in the nation.

(No RPI Engineer has played in the majors, but Dave Lohrman and Bill Snyder, who were both drafted in 1997, made it as far as AAA ball.)

RPI Football had their most successful season in 2003, when they finished 11–2 and lost to St. Johns (Minn.) in the NCAA Division III semi final game.

[12] Additionally, as part of the renovations through a government grant, solar panels were installed on the roof to supply power to the building.

The plan included construction of a new and much larger 4,842‑seat football stadium, a basketball arena with seating for 1,200, a new 50-meter pool, an indoor track and field complex, new tennis courts, new weight rooms and a new sports medicine center.

In the future the new space could be used for expansions of the academic buildings, but for now members of the campus planning team foresee a "historic landscape with different paths and access ways for students and vehicles alike".