Name-a-Day Calendar, October 26: Wichita State Shockers

Page 354 of 365

Chosen in: 1904

Chosen by: Football manager R.J. Kirk

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Today’s Wichita State University was founded in 1895 as Fairmount College. They began playing intercollegiate sports in 1897, when their football team debuted. Their first teams had no official nickname, but that soon changed.

In fall 1904, Fairmount’s football team faced off against the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, a now-defunct institution less than a mile south of Kansas’ border with what was then the Oklahoma Territory. Before the game, team manager R.J. Kirk drew up a promotional poster, and on that poster he called his team the “Wheat Shockers”. This nickname came on account of Fairmount being a relatively rural institution, their students (including football players) often earning money to pay for their education by harvesting wheat through a process known as “shocking”.

The nickname immediately stuck, though the “Wheat” was quickly dropped and fans called the team the Shockers. Fairmount didn’t immediately officialize the nickname, but that also came within a couple decades.

Fairmount College became the Municipal University of Wichita in 1926 and then Wichita State University in 1964, marking that year as the first time the team was named the Wichita State Shockers. Their mascot is a menacing costumed wheat shock named WuShock. Fear him.

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