Johns Hopkins Blue Jays

Infobox college athletics
name = Blue Jays
logo =|50px
university = Johns Hopkins University
conference = Centennial Conference| division = NCAA Division I (Men's & Women's Lacrosse) & NCAA Division III
director = Tom Calder
city = Baltimore
state = Maryland
stateabb = MD
teams =
stadium = Homewood Field
arena =
arena2 =
mascot = Blue Jay
nickname = Blue Jays
fightsong =
color1 = Columbia blue
color2 = Black
hex1 = 9BDDFF
hex2 = 000000
pageurl = http://hopkinssports.cstv.com
pagename = Hopkins Sports
callsign_meaning =

The Johns Hopkins University's intercollegiate sports teams are called the "Blue Jays" (after the bird Blue Jay), and they compete in the NCAA's Division III, except for the Lacrosse teams that compete in Division I. They are primarily members of the Centennial Conference. The team colors are Columbia blue and black, and the Blue Jay is their mascot. Homewood Field is the home stadium.

Hopkins celebrates Homecoming in the spring to coincide with the height of the lacrosse season. The Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame, governed by US Lacrosse, is located on the Homewood campus and is adjacent to Homewood Field. Past Johns Hopkins lacrosse teams have represented the United States in international competition. At the 1932 Summer Olympics lacrosse demonstration event Hopkins played for the US. They have also gone to Melbourne, Australia to win the 1974 World Lacrosse Championship.

Origin of the name

Originally, the Johns Hopkins athletes were not called "Blue Jays" but "the Black and Blue", a nickname derived from their athletic colors. Hopkins archivist James Stimpert has theorized that the Blue Jay name stemmed from Hopkins' student humor magazine, The Black and Blue Jay, first published in 1920. The "Black and Blue" came from the athletic colors and the "Jay" most likely stood for first initial in Johns Hopkins. Luckily, Blue Jays are black-and-blue birds that can be spotted in Homewood, providing a perfect match.

Men's Athletics

*Baseball
*Basketball
*Crew
*Cross Country
*Fencing
*Field Hockey
*Football
*Lacrosse
*Soccer
*Swimming
*Tennis
*Track & Field (Indoor and Outdoor)
*Water Polo
*Wrestling

Women's Athletics

*Basketball
*Crew
*Cross Country
*Fencing
*Lacrosse
*Soccer
*Swimming
*Tennis
*Track & Field (Indoor and Outdoor)
*Volleyball
*Water Polo

Championships

The school's most prominent sports team is its men's lacrosse team, which has won 44 national titles - nine NCAA Division I (2007, 2005, 1987, 1985, 1984, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1974), 29 USILA, and six ILA titles. Hopkins' primary national lacrosse rivals are Princeton University, Syracuse University, the University of Virginia and has a budding rivalry with Duke University due to intense recent competition, including 1 point victories over the Blue Devils in both the 2005 and 2007 NCAA Championships and in the NCAA semifinals in the 2008; its primary intrastate rivals are Loyola College, Towson University, the United States Naval Academy, and the University of Maryland. The rivalry with Maryland is the most prominent in college lacrosse; the schools have met 104 times, with two of those meetings in the playoffs.

Hopkins also has an acclaimed fencing team, which has ranked in the top three of Division III teams in the past few years and in 2007 defeated University of North Carolina, a Division I team, for the first time. The Swimming team also has ranked in the top two of Division III for the last 10 years. Hopkins also has a century-old rivalry with McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College), playing the Green Terrors 83 times in football since the first game in 1894.

Johns Hopkins' latest team to encounter postseason success is the school's baseball team. Although Blue Jays baseball regularly wins the Centennial Conference regular season and tournament titles, 2008 was the first time since 1989 that the Blue Jays made it to the College World Series for Division III baseball, hosted in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Blue Jays finished runner-up to Trinity College, losing a heart-breaker in the championship game.

External links

* [http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0607web/wholly.html Origin of the Blue Jays name]
* [http://hopkinssports.cstv.com Official Hopkins sports webpage]