Georgetown Hoyas


The Georgetown Hoyas are the collegiate athletics teams that officially represent Georgetown University, located at Washington, D.C. The Georgetown's athletics department fields 24 men's and women's varsity level teams and competes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level as a member of the Big East Conference, with the exception of the Division I FCS Patriot League in football and women's heavyweight rowing. The University also fields 5 non-NCAA varsity teams in men's heavyweight and lightweight rowing, women's lightweight rowing, women's squash, and sailing. In late 2012, Georgetown and six other Catholic, non-FBS schools announced that they were departing the Big East for a new conference. The rowing and sailing teams also participate in east coast conferences. The men's basketball team is the school's most famous and most successful program, but Hoyas have achieved success in a wide range of sports.
The team name is derived from the mixed Greek and Latin chant "Hoya Saxa", which gained popularity at the school in the late nineteenth century. The name "Hoyas" came into use in the 1920s. Their mascot is an anthropomorphic bulldog. Most teams have their athletic facilities on the main campus of Georgetown University. The men's basketball team plays most of their home games at the Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C., and the baseball team plays at Capital One Park in Tysons, VA. Lee Reed took over as the school's athletic director in April 2010.

Traditions

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!" This cheer may either refer to the stalwart defense of the football team, or to the baseball team, which was nicknamed the "Stonewalls", or to the actual stone wall that surrounds the campus. 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.
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. By the fall of 1928, the newspaper had taken to referring to the sports teams as the Hoyas. This was influenced by a popular half time show at football games, where the mascot, a dog nicknamed "Hoya," would entertain fans.
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.
In 1999, Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., with the help of the Hoya Blue fan club, revived the tradition of an official live bulldog named Jack, to work along with the costumed mascot. 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. These colors were introduced by the rowing team in 1876, who deemed blue and gray "appropriate colors for the Club and expressive of the feeling of unity between the Northern and Southern boys of the College." Girls from neighboring Georgetown Visitation sewed the original uniforms together for the team and presented the Boat Club with a blue and gray banner reading "Ocior Euro".
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, and many of these schools no longer use the fight songs that Georgetown's song mocks.

Sports sponsored

Georgetown University fields 29 varsity level sports teams; 13 men's teams, 15 women's teams, and one co-ed team. Intercollegiate sports include :
Baseball is Georgetown's oldest sport, with the first recorded game taking place in 1866, and the team formally organized and sanctioned in 1870. In 1899, Georgetown took the intercollegiate baseball world by storm, winning 18 of 20 games against college teams, beating national powers Princeton and Yale three times each and Virginia twice. The Hilltoppers reached the pinnacle of college baseball when they were acclaimed intercollegiate national champions at season's end.
Upon their triumphant return from their northern trip at the conclusion of that year, the championship team was escorted from the train station to Georgetown in a torchlight parade led by a carriage of top university officials and included students on horseback, alumni, students from the three schools, and the college band. They were greeted with fireworks once back on campus. The Hoyas have no appearances in the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship since the event was established in 1947. The team was once known as the Stonewalls, and is one possible source of the Hoya Saxa cheer famous among all Georgetown sports teams. The Hoyas play their home games at Capital One Park, a 650-seat stadium located in Tysons, Virginia.

Basketball

The Georgetown University men's basketball team is the most well-known Hoya program. Georgetown's first intercollegiate men's basketball team was formed in 1907. 2022 Naismith Coach of the Year Ed Cooley is the team's current head coach. The Hoyas historically have been well regarded not only for their team success, but also for their ability to generate players that after graduation succeed both on the court, such as Patrick Ewing, and off, such as Paul Tagliabue and Henry Hyde. The team has reached the NCAA Tournament Final Four five times including the 1984 national championship, and has won the Big East tournament eight times, and has also won or shared the Big East regular season title ten times.
The women's basketball also plays in the Big East Conference, and are coached by James Howard. The team was first formed in 1970, and joined the Big East in 1983. They play their home games on campus at McDonough Gymnasium. The women's team so far has not seen the same success as the men's, and have only been invited to the NCAA tournament three times, reaching the Sweet Sixteen in 1993 and 2011, and the second round in 2010. They have been invited to the Women's National Invitation Tournament, five times, progressing furthest in 2009 by reaching the fourth round.