The Rocket

Issue date: 3/4/05 Section: News

Media Credit: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN PHILLIPS Talks are currently underway for revamping the university mascot, which could give SRU its third "Rocky" to date.

Media Credit: SAXIGENA YEARBOOK 1979 In 1979, "Rocky" the rock represented SRU as the official school mascot.

Media Credit: ARCHIVED PHOTO/THE ROCKET For the past four years, SRU has had the current mascot "Rocky" the lion.

Administrators, faculty, staff and students are discussing Slippery Rock University's mascot, Rocky the lion, came into being approximately three years ago, SRU President Robert Smith said.

He said the Rocky costume will probably need to be replaced soon, so it's a good time to make sure that the lion is the mascot the students want for the university.

"(The costume) has seen a lot of wear and tear," Smith said.

Smith said he just wants to know if the students at SRU want to keep Rocky as the mascot, change it to something else, or even just change the look of Rocky.

Rocky hasn't always been the mascot at Slippery Rock, Vice President of Student Life Robert Watson said.

Watson said in the 40s the athletic teams were referred to as the Rockets, but the nickname was not official. Watson said alumni from the school talk of an unofficial mascot around that time.

"There apparently, in the 1940s, was a guy who dressed up as "Rocket Man," he said.

Watson said the athletic teams adopted the nickname "the Rockets" for use in all their programs.

"We were the Rockets," he said. "All the athletic teams were the Rockets."

Watson said that in the late 70s or early 80s, the idea to create an official mascot for the school came about.

"Bob Jones, the original Rocky, had the concept of creating a mascot," Watson said. "He ended up saying, 'I have an idea, why don't we make a mascot?'

"His mother made this mascot uniform by hand and it was just this gray, stretch material," Watson said.

Watson said Jones wore the mascot costume while he was a student and when he graduated, someone else took over but because there was no process for choosing another person to dress as the mascot, the school soon went back to not having a one.

Watson said that after about a decade without a mascot, students became interested in having one once again.

"It didn't last all that long; maybe 10 or12 years at most," he said. "In the late 90s, students raised the issue and then created a mascot."

Watson said a group of students, comprised of SGA members and other students, formed a committee to come up with a new idea for a school mascot.

The idea to have a lion as the mascot, Watson said, came from the lion statues outside of West Gym.

West Gym was the first gymnasium for athletics on campus and so the students decided the lion would be an appropriate animal to represent the athletic teams.

Watson said the phrase "Rock pride" was re-coined by that same group.

"We're the Rock and a pride is a group of lions," Watson said.

Watson said he has asked Ross Feltz, director of university public relations and Paul Lueken, athletic director, what might be a reasonable direction to move in regarding the mascot.

"I'm not proposing we change mascots every five years," Watson said. "It's almost five years after we've done this - are we who we want to be?"

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