Name-a-Day Calendar, October 12: Villanova Wildcats
Page 340 of 365
Chosen in: 1926
Chosen by: Assistant football coach Ed Hunsinger
The school we now know as Villanova University was officially founded in 18421 and began playing football in 1894 and men’s basketball in 1900. These teams played with no official nickname for a few decades.
In 1926, Villanova held a university-wide contest to determine a school mascot. The winning entry was “Wildcats”, submitted by assistant football coach Ed Hunsinger, previously most famous for being an offensive lineman for Notre Dame when they were named national champions in 1924.
The nickname has remained to the present day, though not without some minor variations. Villanova’s first women’s sports teams were somewhat demeaningly dubbed the Wildkittens, a moniker that fell out of use in the 1970s. University sources also claim that, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, some Villanova teams unofficially nicknamed themselves the name of the sport followed by “cats” (i.e. “Trackcats”). This was short-lived.
Villanova’s mascot is a costumed wildcat named Will D. Cat.
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It was called the Augustine College of Villanova until 1953.