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It seems time to move the game comments to "game threads."
The game with IPFW this Friday is the first round of the Women's Preseason NIT with subsequent games TBD, the tournament being a three-game-guarantee format.
Loyola is the only other school from the Valley participating. There are sixteen teams in the tournament with Louisville, LSU and Oklahoma being the "name" schools.
Here is the game write-up from the Mastodons' site. Knowing you would want to know, the story behind the nickname follows.
"Mastodons, an elephant-like beast (only larger) were indigenous to the area now known as the southern Great Lakes region over 10,000 years ago. While digging on his property in 1968, an Angola, IN farmer named Orcie Roustsong uncovered a very large bone. He knew it was too large to belong to a horse or cow, so he called Jack Sunderman of the IPFW geosciences department. Roustsong's farm became an archaeological dig site, which unearthed about two-thirds of a mastodon's skeletal remains and the skull of a baby mastodon. Most of those remains are still on display at IPFW.
In 1970, the IPFW student newspaper "The Communicator" began a drive for the student body to pick a mascot. Choices included Boiler-Hoosiers (a combination of Purdue's and Indiana's nicknames, see Nos. 43 and 18 herein), Warhawks, Marauders, Hobbits and Frontiersmen. Steve Pettyjohn, IPFW student body president (1968-69), penned a letter to the editor promoting the Mastodon. "Let's have the courage to be a little different," he wrote.
During the following academic year, the school Geology Club convinced Mark Souder, then student body president and current U.S. congressman from Indiana, to support the Mastodon. Souder appointed a committee which voted in favor of the prehistoric beast, a distant cousin of our present-day elephant.
That's one of the best mascot origination stories in all of college sports."
The game with IPFW this Friday is the first round of the Women's Preseason NIT with subsequent games TBD, the tournament being a three-game-guarantee format.
Loyola is the only other school from the Valley participating. There are sixteen teams in the tournament with Louisville, LSU and Oklahoma being the "name" schools.
Here is the game write-up from the Mastodons' site. Knowing you would want to know, the story behind the nickname follows.
"Mastodons, an elephant-like beast (only larger) were indigenous to the area now known as the southern Great Lakes region over 10,000 years ago. While digging on his property in 1968, an Angola, IN farmer named Orcie Roustsong uncovered a very large bone. He knew it was too large to belong to a horse or cow, so he called Jack Sunderman of the IPFW geosciences department. Roustsong's farm became an archaeological dig site, which unearthed about two-thirds of a mastodon's skeletal remains and the skull of a baby mastodon. Most of those remains are still on display at IPFW.
In 1970, the IPFW student newspaper "The Communicator" began a drive for the student body to pick a mascot. Choices included Boiler-Hoosiers (a combination of Purdue's and Indiana's nicknames, see Nos. 43 and 18 herein), Warhawks, Marauders, Hobbits and Frontiersmen. Steve Pettyjohn, IPFW student body president (1968-69), penned a letter to the editor promoting the Mastodon. "Let's have the courage to be a little different," he wrote.
During the following academic year, the school Geology Club convinced Mark Souder, then student body president and current U.S. congressman from Indiana, to support the Mastodon. Souder appointed a committee which voted in favor of the prehistoric beast, a distant cousin of our present-day elephant.
That's one of the best mascot origination stories in all of college sports."
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