Name-a-Day Calendar, September 4: Towson Tigers
Page 302 of 365
Chosen in: 1960 (officially 1962)
Chosen by: Tower Light sportswriter John Schuerholz, with other staff writers and men’s soccer team members, including head coach Doc Minnegan
The school that is now Towson University did not originate in Towson; it was founded in Baltimore proper as Maryland State Normal School in 1866 and moved to suburban Towson in 1912. When exactly intercollegiate athletics began at the school is a little hazy, but a men’s basketball team definitely existed by 1933, with men’s soccer following later in the 1930s. The school changed its name to Maryland State Teachers College as Towson (or Towson State for short) in 1935.
As teacher education was a priority at the college, their sports teams were often called by some nickname playing off this fact: “Normalites”, “Profs”, “Teachers”, and “Schoolmasters” were common unofficial nicknames for Towson State’s early sports teams. Other nicknames included “(Golden) Knights”, “Towsonites”, and “Indians”, as well as the school’s “Gold and White” color scheme.
According to the university, the above nicknames were all used more or less interchangeably until 1960, when the men’s soccer team finally started a conversation about instituting a permanent sporting nickname. The team met with the staff of the Tower Light student newspaper1 to discuss options for what they’d like to be called during the 1960 season. Evidently, they decided on “Tigers”, because the first Tower Light soccer article of the year on September 23 saw sportswriter John Schuerholz unceremoniously refer to the team as the Tigers.
Schuerholz and the rest of the Tower Light staff continued referring to the men’s soccer team as the Tigers throughout the season, but after the fall soccer season ended, the Tigers nickname was abandoned for winter sports and did not reappear until spring, when the lacrosse and baseball teams also began using it.
From there, the Tower Light staff essentially decided to start acting like the nickname was official until everyone else just accepted it to be the case. They called all Towson State sports teams the Tigers in their final spring 1961 issue, and in the first issue of fall 1961, sports editor Lou Winkelman named his column “Tiger Tales”.
By this point, “Tigers” was already the most commonly used nickname for Towson State athletics, but it wouldn’t become official until November 20, 1962, when Winkelman suggested this to the Student Senate, who unanimously agreed. They were officially the Towson State Tigers.
The shorter “Towson Tigers” came in 1997, when the school changed its name to the current Towson University.2 Their mascot today is a costumed tiger named Doc, after Dr. Donald I. “Doc” Minnegan, the school’s first athletic director and the head coach of the 1960 men’s soccer team who put the wheels in motion to install “Tigers” as the official athletics nickname.
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P.S. Baseball fans might recognize John Schuerholz’s name. He went on to become the general manager behind the 1985 World Series champion Royals as well as the powerhouse 1990s Braves who somehow only won one title (1995). He was unanimously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Today’s Game Committee in 2017.
This paper shortened Towerlight to one word in 1969 and still goes by this title today.
In the interim, they became Towson State College in 1963 and Towson State University in 1976.