HISTORY OF UND NAME
UND's proud athletics history dates back to the late 1800s and includes 11 national championships and hundreds of student-athletes who have gone on to compete in the Olympics, National Football League, National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. The Dacotah Legacy Collection will honor the team and individual accomplishments achieved by UND Athletics throughout the decades and will feature the various logos worn by those teams and student-athletes.
Early UND athletics teams were known unofficially as the “Nodaks.” UND's first official athletics nickname was the “Flickertails,” a term which made its first public appearance in a Grand Forks Herald account of UND's Oct. 8, 1904, football game against the University of Minnesota, 15 years after UND's first athletics contest was played. In 1911, UND's student body officially adopted “Flickertails” as its athletics nickname.
In the fall of 1930, the University adopted the nickname “Sioux” for its varsity teams and the word “Fighting” was later added. UND officially retired the “Fighting Sioux” nickname and logo from intercollegiate competition prior to the 2012-13 athletics season.
The University of North Dakota formed a Nickname Committee to facilitate the selection of a permanent nickname. This is the continuation of the work begun by the Nickname and Logo Process Recommendation Task Force that met during the fall of 2014.
Using that Task Force's recommendations as a starting point, the new Nickname Committee was charged with reviewing a list of potential names, submitted via a public process soon to be announced, and developing and submitting a short list of those names for a final public vote.
The UND Nickname Committee concluded its work on July 21, 2015 and agreed on a final short list of names. UND stakeholders (Current UND Students, Current UND Faculty, Current UND Staff, UND Retirees, UND Alumni, UND Donors, Current Season Ticket Holders to UND Athletic Events) were invited to participate in an online process to cast votes to choose a new nickname. On Thursday, November 18 2015, President Robert Kelley announced voters' pick for the new nickname of University of North Dakota: Fighting Hawks.
HISTORY OF THE DACOTAH LEGACY COLLECTION
The word 'Dacotah' and its font are a tribute to the Dacotah Annual, the University of North Dakota's first annual yearbook.
In addition to the University of North Dakota's prudent decision to protect intellectual property, UND is required by 2007 settlement agreement with the NCAA to protect certain University trademarks. To protect these marks, the University must continue to use the marks and monitor unauthorized uses.
The first edition of the Dacotah Legacy Collection went on sale Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013 and were sold exclusively at Scheels All Sports in Grand Forks and at the Sioux Shop at Ralph Engelstad Arena (REA). Since then, select commemorative items have been produced for exclusive sale at the Sioux Shop at REA.
###
