Georgetown Hoyas History

Georgetown Colors: Blue & Gray

Georgetown's colors are blue and gray. The colors were selected in 1876 by the Georgetown College Boat Club (the original crew team) in honor of Georgetown students and alumni who wore the Union blue and Confederate gray in the Civil War.

As recounted in a history of the crew by Lawrence H. Cooke, distinctive colors were important in watching crew races, since fans on shore wanted to know their team's location in the race. Harvard's crimson and Penn's red and blue were already well known, but Georgetown had no such colors to call its own. A student committee declared Blue and Gray "as appropriate colors for the [Boat] Club and expressive of the feeling of unity between the Northern and Southern boys of the College" and recommended its adoption for the team.

Soon thereafter, a banner was presented to the College by the Boat Club, sewn by the girls of the nearby Georgetown Visitation school. Half blue and half gray, it bore the inscription Ocior Auro ("Swifter Than The Wind"). The banner and its colors quickly became a part of college life. Student gatherings and formal University occasions both prominently featured the colors.

By the time intercollegiate teams were involved in varsity play, the Blue and Gray were already a Georgetown's tradition.

What's A Hoya

The origins of the word "Hoya" defy simple explanation. Over the years, some have claimed it is an Indian word, while those of a legal mind thought it related to the French word oyez, the traditional opening of judicial sessions. Still others held that with Georgetown's location along a river, Hoya might be an offshoot of the nautical "ahoy". None of these claims have held water, so to speak.

The official explanation holds that there was a baseball team at Georgetown called the "Stonewalls". It is suggested that a student, applying Greek and Latin, dubbed the team the hoia saxa-- hoia is the Greek neuter plural for "what" or "what a", while saxa is the Latin neuter plural for "rock". Substituting a "y" for an "i"; "hoya saxa" literally means "what rocks".

To this day, however, no one has proven exactly when and under what circumstances the yell originated. While there was a Stonewalls team between 1866 and 1873, an actual reference to the team is pure speculation. Some have held that hoia saxa referred not to the team but its surroundings--the team's field (the present site of Copley Lawn) was bounded by the College Walls along 37th street. One theory holds that words such as saxa (Latin for "rocks") were scribbled on the walls for years and a similar phrase may have simply been adopted by fans of the baseball team.

The Hoya yell gained additional attention in 1920. In that year, a fledgling student newspaper known as The Hilltopper petitioned Rev. Coleman Nevils, S.J., Dean of the College, to change its name to The HOYA, a name said to be more representative of the University. Nevils, who had championed naming the Holy Cross student paper "The Hoia" without success in 1916, enthusiastically approved the change.

As the college paper was often cited by sportswriters covering Georgetown sports in the 1920's, it took only a few years for a nickname to be born. By the fall of 1928, a HOYA sportswriter began to refer to the football team as the "Hoyas" rather than its contemporary nickname of the "Hilltoppers". The change was picked up by local writers as basketball season began, and Hoyas became the official Georgetown nickname within a few years.

Among all college programs, only Georgetown University holds the unique team nickname to which its students, faculty, alumni, and fans can take pride in. But the Hoya yell did find its way into the fight songs of two other Jesuit colleges: Holy Cross' "Hoiah, Holy Cross", and Marquette's "Ring Out Ahoya". Each appears to have its roots, however distant, in the yell begun on a college yard many years ago. In short, "Hoya" may be difficult to define, but its tradition endures. And that's "what" it's all about.

Jack The Bulldog

Georgetown's nickname is a Hoya, but its mascot is a bulldog. This bulldog is known as Jack, but many other dogs through the years have been a part of Georgetown teams.

Among the earliest mascots was a terrier named Stubby, whose name is largely unfamiliar today but was perhaps the most famous dog of his generation. According to the Associated Press, the legend of Stubby started in at the Yale Bowl in 1916, when the mongrel wandered onto the field as the Connecticut National Guard was training for war. When the 102nd Infantry Regiment went overseas to fight in World War I, Stubby was smuggled along.

Stubby was more than a mascot. The dog served 18 months on the front with his regiment in World War I, saving his regiment from surprise mustard gas attacks, locating wounded soldiers, and even catching a German spy by the seat of his pants. Such exploits made the front page of newspapers back home, and after Stubby's last battle at Chateau-Thierry, France, he was outfitted with a blanket with the medals and honors awarded him for bravery, with flags of all the Allied Nations of the war.

Returning home, Stubby was invited to the White House by President Wilson and was personally decorated for valor by General John J. Pershing in a post-war ceremony. It was the bravery and loyalty of this dog that was instrumental in inspiring the creation of the U.S. "K9 Corps" for World War II.

In 1921, Stubby's owner, J. Robert Conroy, was headed to Georgetown for law school and took the dog along. According to a 1983 account in Georgetown Magazine, Stubby "served several terms as mascot to the football team. Between the halves, Stubby would nudge a football around the field [with his nose], much to the delight of the crowd. This trick became a standard feature of the repertoire of Georgetown mascots throughout the twenties and thirties. "

Stubby died in 1926. His mounted remains and medal-encrusted blanket were displayed for years at the National Red Cross Museum and were presented in 1956 to the Smithsonian. After forty years in moth balls (literally), Stubby is now on loan to the State of Connecticut, which featured the war hero at a recent statewide dog show.

Following Stubby, a terrier named, appropriately, "Hoya", became a fan favorite. Hoya belonged to Rev. Vincent McDonough, S.J., Moderator of Athletics and namesake of McDonough Gymnasium. This terrier was frequently seen at Georgetown football games in the 1920's and 1930's. A Great Dane named "Butch" became the team's unofficial mascot during the 1940's, but as Georgetown suspended football in 1951, the tradition of live mascots ended. Years later, the name of "Jack" and the breed of English Bulldog was formally adopted in 1962, adding the blue and gray cap once worn by freshmen onto its emblem.

Students maintained pet bulldogs as mascots into the early 1970's. By 1979, Georgetown was one of the first schools to employ a "human mascot", a student in the now familiar blue and gray bulldog suit. "Jack" now appears at major athletic and social events, and is among the most recognizable college mascots in the nation. (Jack is not to be confused with "Joe Hoya", which is a traditional campus expression for the everyday Georgetown student.)