Even farther back.
I was a senior at Hoopeston Area High School, my boss was installing wiring for CITES (then CCSO), the guy who I replaced in my current position was the “original nettech”.
A year and a half later, 18 Oct 1995, here were the counts of active URHNet connections:

The latest tally of total (active) URHnet connections, as counted
from the bootp tables:
Allen 101
CRH 386 (six contiguous Champaign halls)
FAR 168
ISR 301
LAR 20
PAR 131
Triad 12
TVD 50
TOTAL 1,169
At this time last year, the total was 391: an increase of 299%

Last fall, we probably passed that total within a few hours of opening.