Name-a-Day Calendar, May 11: Nevada Wolf Pack
Page 186 of 365
Chosen in: The 1921-22 school year
Chosen by: A student body vote, inspired by Nevada Sagebrush editor Leslie Bruce, inspired by a local sportswriter
What is now known as the University of Nevada, Reno, was established in 1874 and began playing football in 1896. The team was first called the Sagebrushers—a nod to the sagebrush, Nevada’s state flower—with some fans and sportswriters also calling them the Sagehens or the Sage Warriors. All of these names were common, but none of them were ever official.
At some point during the 1921-22 school year, a local sportswriter is said to have described a Nevada team as playing like “a pack of wild wolves”. This prompted Leslie Bruce, the editor of the Nevada Sagebrush student newspaper, to run a poll in that paper asking students what the school’s sports teams should be called.
Stunningly, Bruce wouldn’t live to see the results of this poll; he died in an accident shortly after he published it. But it was apparent that he wanted the teams to be named the Wolf Pack, so some of his fellow students campaigned for the school to make it so, in his honor. They got their wish, and the nickname has lived on for a century despite wolves not being native to Nevada at the time.1
The Wolf Pack, on the other hand, will always be native to Nevada. It includes three costumed wolf mascots: Alphie, Wolfie Jr., and Luna.
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Gray wolves were historically native to almost all of North America, but the expansion of human settlement reduced their United States range to the isolated far northern reaches of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington, as well as the mountainous areas of Idaho, western Montana, and northern Wyoming.