Name-a-Day Calendar, March 20: Kent State Golden Flashes
Page 134 of 365
Chosen in: 1926
Chosen by: An unknown winner of a mascot contest
The Ohio State Normal College at Kent was established in 1910; it began instruction in 1912 as Kent State Normal School. The school began playing intercollegiate men’s basketball in 1915, their teams nicknamed the Silver Foxes in 1923 by college president John McGilvery, who operated a local silver fox ranch.
In 1926, McGilvery got himself in hot water with the Ohio legislature and the Board of Trustees ousted him as president. With McGilvery went the Silver Foxes nickname, and interim president T. Howard Winters held a schoolwide contest to pick a replacement, offering $251 to the winner. “Golden Flashes” won this contest, but there appears to be no available information on who submitted it, and it wasn’t very popular at first; the student newspaper and yearbook both still called the teams the Silver Foxes in 1927.
The staffs of both publications used “Golden Flashes” in 1928, but it still wasn’t set in stone and the school held another contest to determine what the permanent athletics nickname would truly be. The two previously established nicknames would face several other, less creative monikers such as “Warriors” and “Hurricanes”. “Golden Flashes” won this vote too, and this time it stuck. It got a boost from 1922 football player Oliver Wolcott, who had since become the sports editor at the Kent Courier-Tribune and consistently used the new nickname in his game stories.
Kent State has a fairly rich mascot history. Their current mascot is a costumed eagle named Flash.
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