By Matt Dooley Staff writer
Souring into Susquehanna, the new River Hawks mascot is to be unveiled on Oct. 28 and I’m pumped. We will finally have a mascot that directly correlates to its namesake. Our new feathered friend, which has not yet been named, will in fact be a river hawk.
The mascot situation has been tricky ever since I arrived here two years ago. My first year here, our mascot was a tiger with a jersey that said Crusaders because the school nickname at the time was the Crusaders.
I wondered why our mascot was a tiger. I understood why it had to be because of what the gruesome real-life crusaders had done to people, but still. I held this curiosity about how this tiger came to be. Don’t get me wrong, The Crusader tiger mascot was great. I just never would have expected that a tiger in a Crusaders jersey would portray the Crusaders sports teams.
That tiger, to me, felt like he was genuinely a fan of Susquehanna. However, that mascot is gone, and now the River Hawks will fly above and beyond to be spirited. When I first arrived here the school seemed to already be debating about the old mascot. In the spring of my first year that tiger almost became a squirrel.
By the time sophomore year rolled around, we had that tiger making his rounds on campus once again before having him retired to make way for our new avian resident. It felt like the school at the time was a dog chasing its own tail when regarding what to do with the mascot. However, at least we have a mascot here at Susquehanna.
At my high school we didn’t have a mascot character per se. What we did have was a warrior in a kilt that was showcased on t-shirts and hoodies, but no actual person in a suit.
That all changed when I came to Susquehanna as a first-year. There it was, the Crusader tiger sauntering throughout Degenstein. It was as if I was at Disney, except there was only one mascot costume instead of 1 billion mascot costumes.
The tiger knew how to make people get into the school spirit, randomly coming up to people, giving high fives and even miming conversations. It was just cool to interact with that tiger.
Being a junior now, I am honored to have been a Susquehanna Crusader, but that doesn’t deter my excitement for our new mascot. That tiger will never be forgotten, but it has been too long since campus has been graced with the presence of a mascot. Susquehanna isn’t the same without a mascot wandering campus.
Soon enough that bird will land, allowing it to interact with the first-year class, showing them why a mascot is such an essential part to the Susquehanna community.
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