Name-a-Day Calendar, October 13: Virginia Cavaliers
Page 341 of 365
Chosen in: 1923
Chosen by: Student Lawrence Haywood Lee Jr., kinda
The University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. Intercollegiate athletics got underway at some point in the late 19th century; the first modern sports team to debut was the football team in 1888. With that development came the adoption of orange and navy blue as the school colors, as the previous silver and red scheme was often nearly invisible on mud-soaked football fields. Virginia’s teams had no official nickname at this point, but they were often referred to by those “Orange and Blue” colors.
Virginia’s baseball team came the next year and a bitter rivalry quickly formed with nearby Washington and Lee University. As the story goes, Washington and Lee fans often called Virginia’s players “Wahoos” as some insult of unclear meaning. Virginia fans then turned that around and began calling their players “Wahoos” because it sounded cool. This practice became gradually more common over the years and was essentially ubiquitous by World War II. Nowadays, “Wahoos” and the shortened “Hoos” are used as unofficial nicknames for Virginia athletics, perhaps more commonly than the official nickname.
About that official nickname: “Cavaliers” celebrated its 100th birthday this year! Its origin traces back to a spring 1923 contest from the student newspaper College Topics—not to choose a nickname, but to write a fight song. The winner of that contest was the duo of writer Lawrence Haywood Lee Jr. ‘24 and composer Fulton Lewis Jr. ‘25, who submitted “The Cavalier Song”. Despite the song owing its title to that word, “cavalier”, it appears just once in the song proper, as what feels like a throwaway line in the final stanza.
“So through the years, like Cavaliers,
We’ll shout Virginia’s name!
It e’er shall be on land and sea,
A sign of might and fame!”1
As early as fall 1923, sportswriters took to the spirit of that song and began calling Virginia’s teams the Cavaliers. College Topics renamed itself The Cavalier Daily in 1948 and still retains that title today.
Virginia’s mascot, costumed cavalier Cavman, officially debuted in 1984, but similar-looking iconography dates well further back in time. They used to make these amazingly dorky “Adventures of Cavman” videos and play them as the introduction to every football game but then Bronco Mendenhall took over the program and immediately got rid of them because he’s a jerk.
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Without having listened to this song, I am choosing to sing it to the tune of the verse in “O Canada”.