Name-a-Day Calendar, June 25: Presbyterian Blue Hose

Page 231 of 365

Chosen in: 1954

Chosen by: School administration, shortening the previous “Blue Stockings”

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Clinton College was founded in 1880, began intercollegiate athletics in 1895, and was renamed Presbyterian College in 1904. The school’s teams wore blue socks, so local sportswriters almost immediately dubbed them the “Blue Stockings”, a nickname that also paid homage to actual, Puritan “blue-stocking Presbyterians”.

The school shortened this nickname to “Blue Hose” in 1954. Ben Hay Hammet, a former public relations specialist for the school, posited in 1982 that the nickname change came “presumably under the assumption that it sounded somewhat fiercer to carry onto the field of athletic battle”.

Presbyterian also claims the “Blue Hose” nickname respects the school’s Scottish heritage, though Scottish heritage belongs more to the school’s hometown—Clinton, South Carolina—than to the school itself. Scottish warriors often wore blue tartans in battle.

This includes Presbyterian’s mascot, a costumed Scottish warrior named…Scotty Scotsman.

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