Name-a-Day Calendar, October 24: Western Kentucky Hilltoppers
Page 352 of 365
Chosen in: 1911
Chosen by: It came naturally
The early history of what is now Western Kentucky University is a bit of a mess, but it’s directly relevant to the origin of the “Hilltoppers” nickname, so I’ll try to simplify this as much as possible.
In 1876, the combined Glasgow Normal School and Business College was founded in Glasgow, Kentucky. In 1884 this institution moved to Bowling Green and renamed itself Southern Normal School and Business College. In 1890, Potter College, a private women’s school unaffiliated with Southern, opened on a separate campus elsewhere in Bowling Green, atop a hill overlooking the city center from the northeast.
In 1906, the Kentucky General Assembly authorized a public normal school in Bowling Green, and this new school essentially usurped Southern’s campus and student body, reestablishing itself as Western Kentucky State Normal School. Intercollegiate athletics began at the school in 1908 with the foundation of the football program, its first teams playing under no official nickname.
Around the same time, Potter College’s president became badly ill, leading the school to close permanently in 1909. Western Kentucky immediately purchased their campus, and in 1911, they moved all of their operations to the former Potter Campus, which they still occupy today.
As students marched up the hill on February 4, 1911, hauling tons of school equipment with them, they took pride in reaching the top. They became proud to call themselves “Hilltoppers”. That moniker soon extended to athletics, and the rest is history.
I’m not even gonna try to describe Big Red.
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