Name-a-Day Calendar, September 25: UNC Wilmington Seahawks
Page 323 of 365
Chosen in: 1947
Chosen by: The school’s first student council
Wilmington College first opened in 1947 as a two-year junior college originally founded to serve the higher educational needs of World War II veterans taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. And it was a prominent World War II sporting outfit that eventually gave this new school their identity.
In 1942, as the United States fully entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Navy set up a few pre-flight schools at established colleges and universities around the country. The purpose of these schools was to train cadets in the basics of flight for three months so they could be ready for an assignment to the Pacific Fleet.
As you’d expect from a military school, physical fitness was also a hefty part of the curriculum. At most of these institutions, this included the establishment of a football program. Some of these football programs immediately became nationally competitive for two reasons: 1) they featured some of the best young athletes on the planet training to win an actual war, and 2) several prominent football coaches enlisted in the military and were assigned to coach these programs.
For an example, consider the most successful pre-flight football program and, coincidentally, the one that’s relevant to Wilmington College. The University of Iowa Pre-Flight football team played for three wartime seasons (1942–1944). In 1942, they were coached by legendary Minnesota coach Bernie Bierman, who was fresh off back-to-back undefeated national championship seasons.1 In 1943, they were led by Don Faurot, who had coached Missouri for eight years before the war and would coach them for 11 more years after it. In 1944, they were headed by Jack Meagher, Auburn’s coach from 1934–1942.
Fast-forwarding back to the postwar era, not long after Wilmington College opened, a five-person student council formed, and among the first orders of business for them was to decide on an athletics nickname. The Iowa Pre-Flight football team was called the Seahawks, a moniker clearly befitting a team of recruits training to fly over water. The student council at Wilmington, a school just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, connected with that nickname and adopted it as their own.
Wilmington College became a four-year school in 1963 and joined the University of North Carolina system in 1969. Their mascot is a costumed seahawk named Sammy C. Hawk.
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Bierman’s cadets actually played at Minnesota that season and won 7-6, which I’m sure would have felt like a betrayal if everyone wasn’t too busy fighting the real enemy.