Name-a-Day Calendar, October 28: Winthrop Eagles
Page 356 of 365
Chosen in: 1975
Chosen by: The Student Government Association after a schoolwide poll
Today’s Winthrop University was founded as a normal school for white women in 1886. It remained a women’s school until 1974, which is about the same time Title IX made large-scale women’s sports a reality, so our intercollegiate athletics story doesn’t begin until after the school became coeducational.
When the school was women-only, each class was represented by its own mascot, but as intercollegiate sports became a real possibility at Winthrop, the Student Government Association (SGA) thought it better to have one catch-all mascot to represent the entire school. In 1975, they polled the student body and the school’s faculty and staff, and this poll resulted in three finalists: Cardinals, Eagles, and Sandlappers.1 From these options, the SGA chose “Eagles”. We don’t know who originally suggested this mascot or why, but it’s stuck ever since.
Winthrop’s mascot is a majestic costumed eagle named Big Stuff.
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“Sandlappers” is a somewhat obscure demonym for South Carolinians. It most likely refers to the fact that many poor people in the state ate dirt and clay to survive, and is often a racially charged epithet. Let’s be glad they didn’t pick that one.