Name-a-Day Calendar, April 3: Louisiana Tech Bulldogs / Lady Techsters
Page 148 of 365
Chosen in: 1900 / 1974
Chosen by: Unanimous student body vote / the physical education department
In 1899, a few students were walking back from their classes at what was then the Louisiana Industrial Institute when they noticed a stray bulldog en route to their boarding house. They fed him everything they had and went on their way, but when they made it back to their house, they noticed the bulldog had followed them. They asked the owner of the house if the bulldog could stay with them, and the owner obliged, but only for that one night; the next day, they’d have to find someone else to take him.
In the middle of the night, the house caught fire, awakening the bulldog before any of the humans noticed that anything was amiss. The bulldog woke up the students and the owner and they all rushed outside to escape the fire. But once they gathered outside, they realized one student was still in the house, which was at this point completely ablaze. Once again, before the humans had time to spring into action, the bulldog was on it; it raced back into the burning house and braved the conditions to awaken the last student, who made it to safety moments before certain death.
The students and the owner all awaited the bulldog’s return but it never came. The next morning, the fire had gone out and the students sifted through the rubble hoping the bulldog was still alive. They found that the bulldog had taken shelter in one of the few nooks of the house that hadn’t burned, its body intact but its life not. The bulldog had died of heat exhaustion.1
The next year, the school established its football program and needed a nickname for the team. They held a student body vote to decide the nickname and “Bulldogs” won unanimously.
Louisiana Tech is one of a select few schools that has a significantly different nickname for its women’s teams than for its men’s teams. The women’s teams are known as the Lady Techsters and have been since the women’s basketball team — the school’s first women’s sports program — was founded in the 1974-75 season. Sonja Hogg, the team’s first head coach, did not want the team to be known as the “Lady Bulldogs” because she “could just hear people saying, ‘there comes Coach Hogg and all of her little bitches’”, so she came up with the Lady Techsters moniker instead. And the Lady Techsters have seen more success than the Bulldogs could ever dream of: they’re three-time women’s basketball national champions.
Since 1930, Louisiana Tech has enjoyed a live bulldog mascot named Tech. The current iteration, Tech XXII, drives a Bugatti.
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P.S. Louisiana Tech’s blue/red color scheme also came from the heroic bulldog of 1899. When the students went to bury it, two of them wrapped their jackets around it. One was blue and one was red.
Whether I believe this story is true is for you to decide.