Name-a-Day Calendar, January 13: Denver Pioneers
Page 68 of 365
Chosen in: 1925
Chosen by: Students in a nickname contest
maddy! here! Local Summit League fan, joining in on the Name-a-Day Calendar to help tell the story of a Summit League team.
What is now the University of Denver started fielding athletic teams in 1867, three years after the institution was founded. At first, they didn’t have an official nickname, but local newspapers and their sportswriters would call them the Ministers or Fighting Parsons due to the institution's origins as a Methodist Episcopal Church seminary school.
In 1925, the school ran a student nickname contest to give their athletic teams an official name, which “Pioneers” won.1 The name has stuck around ever since, even as in recent years there has been controversy surrounding the name and its ties to the genocide of Native Americans, especially in the land surrounding the university and especially given who founded the university in the first place.
The university has taken some steps to address this, including dropping their Denver Boone mascot in 1998,2 but many students believe this is not enough and have pushed for the name to be changed for decades. The university finally decided to look into it in 2013, and a panel of administrators, students, and alumni allegedly almost succeeded in changing the name to “Trailblazers” in 2017, but that and every other effort fell through. The university officially stated in 2020 that the Pioneer name will live on.
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The university’s Kynewisbok yearbook for 1924-25 refers to Fall 1924 athletic teams as the Pioneers, but we believe this was done retroactively.
Fun fact: this mascot was designed by Disney!
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