The school's sports teams are called "the Hoyas". Many years ago, students well-versed in the classical languages invented the Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets mixed Greek and Latin chant of "hoya saxa", translating roughly as "what (or such) rocks!" Eight years after the foulding of The Hoya student newspaper, a campus sports writer began to refer to teams as the "Hoyas" Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets rather than as the "Hilltoppers".
The name was picked up in the local dailies, and Hilltoppers soon fell out of view. The mascot of Georgetown athletics programs is Jack the Bulldog. The teams participate in the NCAA's Division I. Georgetown competes in the Big East Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets Conference in virtually every NCAA sport, though the football team competes in the Division I-AA Patriot League. The Men's Basketball team, the most successful and well-known sports program at the university, won the Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets NCAA championship in 1984 under coach John Thompson. The current coach is his son, John Thompson III.
In 2006, the basketball team reached the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament and was ranked in national polls for the first time Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets since 2001. What is a Hoya?? The University admits that the precise origin of the term "Hoya" is unknown. The official story is that at some point prior to 1920, students well-versed in the classical languages invented the Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets Greek hoia or hoya, meaning "what" or "such", and the Latin saxa, to form "What Rocks!" Depending on who tells the story, the "rocks" either refer to the baseball team, which was nicknamed the "Stonewalls" after the Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets Civil War, to the stalwart defense of the football team, or to the stone wall that surrounded the campus.
In 1920, students began publishing the campus's first regular newspaper under the name The Hoya, after successfully petitioning Rev. Coleman Nevils, S.J., Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets Dean of the College, to change the name of the young paper, which was originally to be known as The Hilltopper.
By the fall of 1928, the newspaper had Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets taken to referring to the sports teams (then called the Hilltoppers in reference to Georgetown's geography) as the Hoyas. Dean Nevils's Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets former school, College of the Holy Cross, also refers to the term "Hoya" in one of its fight songs, as does a third Jesuit school, Marquette University. Big East opponents, whose schools tend to Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets have more concrete nicknames, have long used "What's a Hoya?" as a chant to mock Georgetown. Georgetown fans can take pleasure in knowing that, Georgetown Hoyas basketball tickets literally, what is a Hoya.