Name-a-Day Calendar, January 3: Coppin State Eagles
Page 58 of 365
Chosen in: Mid-1960s (probably 1965)
Chosen by: We don’t know, but we do know why (probably)
What is now Coppin State University began in 1900 as a single, one-year training course for teachers at Baltimore’s Colored High School. In the years that followed, this course would expand into a multi-course department, split away from the high school, and establish itself as the Fanny Jackson Coppin Normal School, that last milestone coming in 1926. The school would continue exclusively educating future teachers until 1963, when the Board of Trustees finally allowed it to offer bachelor’s degrees in other subjects and it became Coppin State College.
As far as I can tell, it was then that the school first began to dabble in intercollegiate athletics. There’s nothing from the teachers college days, but in 1964 — just one year after the expansion — the men’s basketball team debuted.
I couldn’t find much on the initial naming of the team; Coppin State primary resources from this time are scarce and my request to their library for assistance went unanswered. I don’t know exactly when the name was chosen, who chose it, or how, but I can ballpark it based on what I do know.
Based on various newspaper archives from the time, none affiliated with Coppin State and some affiliated with other schools in the region, I can ascertain that the Coppin State men’s basketball team was regularly called the Eagles beginning in the 1965-66 school year. Nothing I found from the 1964-65 season refers to the team as the Eagles and some sources from the season omit an official name in places where including one would make a lot more sense (i.e. calling them the “Coppin State homesters”).
Current Coppin State sources claim that the eagle was chosen as the school mascot because it “represents all that is courageous, noble, and strong”, “across cultures and throughout history”. It’s anyone’s guess whether that was the original intent.
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