Ateneo de Manila University - Athletics - Mascot: The Blue Eagle

Mascot: The Blue Eagle

Prior to the 1930s, Ateneo had no mascot. Meanwhile, Catholic Schools in the United States, particularly those named after saints, were distressed by the cheekiness with which they were mentioned in newspapers' sports pages. Headlines read "St. Michael’s Wallops St. Augustine’s", or "St. Thomas' Scalps St. Peter’s". It was then agreed that each school adopt a mascot, a symbol for the team which sportswriters could toss about with impunity. The idea caught on in the Philippines. By the 1930s, the Ateneo adopted Blue Eagle as a symbol, and had a live eagle accompany the basketball team.

The choice of the color blue is based on the Ateneo's colors. The choice of an eagle is a reference to the "high-flying" basketball team which would "sweep the fields away" as a dominating force. Furthermore, there was some mythological— even political—significance to the choice of the eagle as a symbol of power. In On Wings of Blue, a booklet of Ateneo traditions, songs, and cheers published in the 1930s and reprinted in the 1950s, Lamberto V. Avellana explains the significance of the Blue Eagle in the context of Ateneo tradition:

"The Eagle — fiery, majestic, whose kingdom is the virgin sky, is swift in pursuit, terrible in battle. He is a king - a fighting king... And thus he was chosen—to soar with scholar’s thought and word high into the regions of truth and excellence, to flap his glorious wings and cast his ominous shadow below, even as the student crusader would instill fear in those who would battle against the Cross. And so he was chosen — to fly with the fleet limbs of the cinder pacer, to swoop down with the Blue gladiator into the arena of sporting combat and with him to fight — and keep on fighting till brilliant victory, or honorable defeat. And so he was chosen — to perch on the Shield of Loyola, to be the symbol of all things honorable, even as the Great Eagle is perched on the American escutcheon, to be the guardian of liberty. And so he was chosen—and he lives, not only in body to soar over his campus aerie, but in spirit, in the Ateneo Spirit... For he flies high, and he is a fighter, and he is King!"