Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens


Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens is the joint athletics program for Pomona College and Pitzer College, two of the Claremont Colleges. It competes in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference of the NCAA Division III. Its mascot is Cecil the Sagehen. Its primary rival is the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas, the joint team of the three other undergraduate Claremont Colleges.

Sports

There are 11 women's and 10 men's teams.

History

Pomona College's first intercollegiate sports teams were formed in 1895.
The college was one of the three founding members of SCIAC in 1914, and its football team played in the inaugural game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1923, losing to the University of Southern California Trojans. Between 1946 and 1956, Pomona joined with Claremont Men's College to compete as Pomona-Claremont. In 1970, Pomona began competing with Pitzer College on an interim basis, and the arrangement became permanent two years later.
The Sagehens ranked ninth out of 446 Division III schools and second among SCIAC schools in the 2019–2020 NACDA Directors' Cup Division III Final Fall Standings, which ranks athletic programs and awards points relative to their finish in NCAA Championships.

Nickname

Pomona competed under a variety of names in its early years, including "the Blue and White" and "the Huns". The first known appearance of the nickname "Sagehen" is in a 1913 issue of The Student Life newspaper, and in 1918 it became the sole nickname. One popular myth is that a reporter intended to refer the teams as sage Huns, but accidentally typed "hens". However, many say this tale is very unlikely because the "u" and "e" on a keyboard are quite far apart. Later Pomona-Claremont began using it, and it is now the nickname for the combined Pomona-Pitzer team.
"Sagehen" refers to the Greater Sage Grouse, a large ground-dwelling bird native to the western United States, distinguished by is its long-pointed tail. If feeds mainly on sagebrush.

Mascot

Cecil the Sagehen is the official mascot of the team, and serves as its graphic image. The first reference to "Cecil" was made in the 1946 Metate. Rather than in grouse's natural brown and white colors, the mascot is rendered in the team's official blue and orange colors.