Name-a-Day Calendar, February 27: Holy Cross Crusaders
Page 113 of 365
Chosen in: 1925, officially
Chosen by: Student body vote
The College of the Holy Cross first unofficially used the Crusader all the way back in 1884 at an alumni banquet, at which a crusader mounting a horse was engraved into the menus.
This nickname didn’t immediately take hold on their athletics teams, which — believe it or not — had already started to exist by this time (baseball came in 1876). In the beginning, Holy Cross’ sports teams were often called one of two Native American nicknames: “Chiefs” and “Sagamores”.
When the Crusaders moniker came to be used for Holy Cross sports is the subject of some debate, even among official Holy Cross sources. Some accounts say usage began in 1920; others point to Boston Herald sportswriter Stanley Woodward’s 1925 usage of it in reference to the baseball team as the first recorded name drop.
In any case, 1925 is when the nickname became official via student body vote. “Crusaders” went up against the two aforementioned Native American nicknames and beat them handily: per The Tomahawk student newspaper dated October 6, 1925, “Crusaders” received 143 votes to just 17 for “Chiefs” and seven for “Sagamores”. A true blowout.
Of course, that’s not where this ends. In the past decade or so, many have criticized the Crusader as an offensive mascot due to its origins in religious violence in the Middle Ages. Many students and alumni don’t feel it’s appropriate to sportswash genocide. Not only that, but — as Holy Cross economics professor Victor Matheson says — “the Catholics went roughly 4-12 in the Crusades, so we basically have a mascot where the Catholics got our butts kicked on a regular basis”.
The college looked into changing the nickname, but ended up deciding to keep it in 2018. In a statement, college president Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., stated that the “Crusaders” identity is “based on a contemporary understanding of the term, which suggests a noble effort to support a cause, to right a wrong or to make a difference”. Sure. At least they got rid of the knight logos to match this logic.
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