Name-a-Day Calendar, October 30: Wofford Terriers
Page 358 of 365
Chosen in: 1914 at the latest
Chosen by: Unclear
Wofford College was founded in 1854 and kicked off intercollegiate athletics beginning with football in 1889, their first teams bearing no official nickname.
The first identity Wofford appears to have claimed is the one they still claim today. According to school archivists Phillip Jones and Herbert Hucks, drawings of terriers began appearing in the college’s Bohemian yearbook as early as 1909, with one drawing in the 1912 edition specifically calling the terrier “Our Mascot”. The first time a print source specifically called Wofford’s teams by the “Terriers” nickname was in November 1914, when the Wofford College Journal—a literary magazine that has since been discontinued—did it.
Officially, Wofford’s mascot is a purebred Boston Terrier. They’re represented by a costumed terrier named Boss and they used to also be represented by a live terrier named Blitz, but as far as I can tell, the latter practice was discontinued in 2019.
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