Georgetown Hoyas

The word "Hoya" The university says that the precise origin of the term "Hoya" is unknown. At some point before 1893, and likely before 1891, students versed in classical languages combined the Greek hoia or hoya, meaning "what" or "such", and the Latin saxa to form Hoya Saxa!, or "What Rocks!" Father William McFadden, S.J., campus Jesuit and the team's in-house announcer at the Capital One Arena, has disputed the Greek and Latin origin, suggesting the classical words were retroactively applied to a nonsensical cheer. .|alt=Five young shirtless men pose defiantly in a crowd. Each has a letter in blue on their chests to spell HOYAS. After World War I, the term "Hoya" was increasingly used on campus, including for the newspaper and the school mascot. In 1920, students began publishing the campus's first sports newspaper under the name The Hoya, after successfully petitioning the Dean of the college to use it instead of the proposed name, The Hilltopper. "Hilltoppers" was also a name sometimes used for the sports teams. Georgetown's unique team name has caused opponents to mock Georgetown with chants including "What's a Hoya?" Harrison High School, located in Kennesaw, Georgia, is the only other institution in the country licensed to share this name. However, Georgetown Preparatory School, which separated from the university in 1927, uses the name "Little Hoyas" for its sports teams and shares the university's blue and gray color scheme. Mascot Georgetown's nickname is The Hoyas, but its mascot is "Jack the Bulldog." Various breeds of dogs have been used by the sports teams as mascots since the early 1900s. Several notable bull terriers like Sergeant Stubby and "Hoya" were used at football games in the 1920s, as was a Great Dane in the 1940s. However, in 1951, the school suspended its football program because of the increasing cost of the game financially and academically, which left the school without an official live mascot. In 1964, the school permitted exhibition football games to resume, and students financed the purchase of a young English bulldog named Royal Jacket, whom they intended to rename "Hoya", but he only responded to the callname "Jack". This breed was chosen to represent the school because of their "tenacity." The athletics department subsequently adopted as its logo a drawing of a bulldog sporting a blue and gray freshman beanie. The original Jack retired in 1967, but the name was carried over to his successors. In 1977, the university began the tradition of dressing up a student in a blue and gray bulldog costume, replacing the live bulldog, though several dogs periodically joined the costumed mascot during the 1980s and 1990s. When Pilarz left for the University of Scranton in 2003, taking Jack with him, Georgetown secured a new bulldog puppy and found another Jesuit, Christopher Steck, S.J., to care for him. The current bulldog is named "John S. Carroll," a play on the name of Georgetown's founder, which name allows for continuation of the "Jack the Bulldog" nickname. After Jack injured his leg in 2012, two Georgetown parents donated a younger bulldog puppy, who the school refers to as "Jack Jr." Colors Blue and gray are the official colors of Georgetown University and its athletic teams. The colors are an important reminder of the school's past. During the American Civil War, Prussian blue was commonly used in Union uniforms, while cadet grey was used in Confederate uniforms. The basketball and lacrosse teams use gray as their primary color in home jerseys, with blue in away jerseys. White is also frequently used as an accent to these colors, and is actually the main color in the football and baseball teams' away jerseys and the soccer team's home jerseys. Campus spirit groups often encourage students to "bleed Hoya blue," a slogan used on teeshirts and bumper stickers sold to fans. Fans are generally encouraged to wear gray to home games, and sellouts are referred to as a "gray out." Though various shades are used, the primary ones suggested by the school's identification policy are pantone 409 and pantone 282, which is the same shade as Oxford Blue. Fight song The Georgetown Fight Song, known as "There Goes Old Georgetown", is actually an amalgamation of three songs, only the oldest of which, 1913's "The Touchdown Song", contains the lyric "here goes old Georgetown". Students combined a version of "The Touchdown Song" with "Cheer for Victory", written in 1915, and "The Hoya Song", written in 1930, both of which are included in their entirety. The authors of these songs, and of the combined version, are unknown. Georgetown's fight song is rare among U.S. university fight songs for mentioning other colleges by name. Specifically, it mentions Yale University, Harvard University, Princeton University, College of the Holy Cross, the United States Naval Academy, and Cornell University, who were all rivals of Georgetown in the early to mid-20th century, and mocks their fight songs. In recent years the Hoyas only play Cornell and Holy Cross regularly (in football), and many of these schools no longer use the fight songs that Georgetown's song mocks. ==Sports sponsored==