Mascot and Colors
Ateneo has long been involved in intercollegiate sports dating back to 1914. It was a pioneer in Philippine collegiate sports. Ateneo was the first Philippine school to adopt a mascot, and was also the first school to field an organized cheering squad with cheerleaders which was later followed by another first when it introduced a Pep Band to augment the cheerleaders during games.
The choice of an eagle as school mascot holds iconic significance. Conferred with the title "the King", the Blue Eagle is a reference to the "high-flying" Ateneo varsity teams which would "swoop down on the foe and sweep up the fields away" as a dominating force in the field of sports. Furthermore, there is some mythological significance to the eagle as a symbol of power.
The school used to have live eagles as pets in the Padre Faura campus and later on at the Grade School campus in Loyola Heights. A live eagle would lead the men's varsity basketball team at the start of a game in the NCAA as the team enters the basketball court for their warm-up with the school Band playing the fight song, "Blue Eagle - The King".
Blue and White, being the colors of the school's patroness the Blessed Virgin Mary, were chosen as the school's colors. The Ateneo Blue Eagles are sometimes called the Hail Mary Quintet by the sports press. This moniker was given to the Blue Eagles in 1926 when the sports press reporters noticed that the team would pray the Hail Mary during game time-outs and would win by the skin of their teeth.
Read more about this topic: Ateneo Blue Eagles
Famous quotes containing the word colors:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)