'As the result of a thrilling adventure which befell Stanford Williams, a ferocious mother wildcat and four kittens were captured, the University of Arizona has at last procured a mascot to succeed Rufus Arizona I, peace to his ashes,' the Arizona Daily Star reported. On May 20, 1916, the Arizona Daily Star reported that the university had found a successor to Rufus Arizona I, or rather, several potential successors. This time, the school would have a cage for its live mascot to keep it safe. Ten days after the report about Rufus Arizona's death, the Arizona Daily Star reported that Hedgpath, the trainer, was looking for someone who could watch Rufus Arizona II over the summer and if proper arrangements could be made, he'd have someone in Nogales, Arizona, provide the school with another wildcat.

Rufus Arizona was then sent to a taxidermist (a 1919 story in the Arizona Daily Star said Rufus Arizona I was on display in the university museum) and its trainer, John Hedgpath, told the newspaper he would find an animal to replace Rufus Arizona I. The first newspaper reference we could find for 'Rufus Arizona' was on Apin the Arizona Daily Star, which reported on the bobcat's untimely death. The bobcat was later renamed Rufus Arizona in honor of University of Arizona President Rufus Bernard Von KleinSmid after a student body vote. Prior to Arizona's trip to play Pomona (Calif.) College, the Arizona Daily Star reported, 'On the trip to Pomona the Varsity will take the new mascot, a genuine wildcat, purchased by the Freshman class team.' The first newspaper reference we could find of the bobcat mascot was in the Arizona Daily Star on Oct. The bobcat was reportedly named Tom Easter and was given to the student body at an assembly on October 18, 1915.

The freshman team bought the wildcat from soldiers stationed in Douglas, Arizona, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Arizona's athletics website notes that the school's original mascot was a live bobcat that had been purchased by the freshman football team from an Army blacksmith named F.W. The fall after Henry dubbed the fight of Arizona's football team to be like a 'wild cat,' the school had a living, breathing embodiment of that fighting spirit. Henry referred to Arizona as the 'Prohibitionists' a couple times in the story. The headline of the story was 'Tigers Take A Hard Game' and one of the subheadlines was 'Arizona Puts up Unexpected Struggle.' 'Confident of rolling up a big score, the Tigers took the field with grins on their faces, but before the game was ten seconds old they knew they had a battle on their hands,' Henry wrote. Though Arizona lost that game to Occidental College 14-0, the school's football team still left a positive impression upon The Los Angeles Times' Henry.

Here's the original story from where the Wildcats (or technically, 'wild cats') nickname originated. Henry of The Los Angeles Times wrote, 'The Arizona men showed the fight of wild cats and displayed before the public gaze a couple of little shrimps in the backfield who defied all attempts of the Tigers to stop them.' And that's how the University of Arizona sports teams became known as the Wildcats. Arizona's nickname, the Wildcats, came from the former.Īrizona played the Occidental College Tigers on Novemand afterwards, William M. Many college mascots or nicknames originated in one of two ways: from a local newspaper story or from a student vote.

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