The Mystery of the Mascot: Where did the Fightin’ Christian Go?
When the Class of 2021 arrives on Elon University’s campus this fall, there will some new students who have only been alive for one Elon mascot.
Yes, it has been that long since the school changed its mascot from the Fightin’ Christians to the Phoenix.
But the Fightin’ Christian history continues to live on in the minds of many of Elon College graduates, with many displaying the old logo across their cars, their Facebook pages, their cornhole boards and their walls.
Yet, the most well-known piece of Fightin’ Christian history — the mascot head — is missing.
History of the costume
The nickname of Fightin’ Christians first was applied to the United Church of Christ school in 1922 and stuck quickly and thoroughly. As Elon’s athletic teams remained in the lower tiers of collegiate athletics, the school remained a local institution, serving mostly North Carolina and Virginia students.
Elon remained at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics all the way to 1993, winning four NAIA national championships, including back-to-back in football in 1980 and 1981. It was during that time where Senior Associate Director of Athletics Kyle Wills got to know Elon best.
Wills first went to Elon games when his father was hired as the athletic trainer in the early 1970s. Wills attended Elon, working as the head equipment manager with the football team for the 1980 season before graduating in 1981 and immediately becoming an employee of the athletic department, where he’s been ever since.
Wills recalls that the rise of sports mascots led Elon to get a Fightin’ Christian mascot sometime in the late 1970s, with the mascot visible in the highlight of the winning field goal in the 1981 national championship game behind the goal posts.
It was relatively unchanged, physically, when Trip Durham joined the athletic department staff as associate athletic director. Durham, who left Elon in 2009 to run 2D Consulting, a company that helps college athletic departments with their external relations operations, was with the mascot for many of its community outings and remembers one that went a little wrong.
“We went to an elementary school for a celebration of their Reading Day, and one of the rewards was having our cheerleaders and mascot come to school for a visit,” Durham said. “Our mascot performer thought it’d be a great idea to show off his basketball skills as the Fightin’ Christian. The one thing our performer didn’t do — and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this happen anywhere else in the country — is strap down the head well enough. So when he took a shot, his head recoiled off of his shoulders and fell to the floor.
“Now what you have is a gym full of second-graders, watching this grown man kicking this mascot head trying to pick it up. It was almost like a vaudeville act in which you try to pick up your hat, and your lead foot kicks it further away from you. So as you go to pick up that hat again, the lead foot kicks the hat again. This happened for about 90 seconds, and our performer could not capture the head to put it back on. All of the second-graders were ripping and roaring in total laughter.”
Durham recalled the struggle that the school faced trying to find performers to step inside the Fightin’ Christian, calling it a “tough task” and a “tall order.”
“You had all the checkpoints: were they tall enough? Were they slim enough? Were they extroverted enough? Were they theatrical? Did they understand mascotting? Did they want to do it for free, because there was no budget to pay anybody?” Durham said. “The frustration to fill that role was a daily grind, especially during basketball season. When there’s so many events and you have such a small arena, you’ve got to have a presence with your mascot.”
That’s where Brian Weckerly ’96 stepped in.
“The summer before that, doing orientation stuff, there was a request or a need for the mascot,” Weckerly said. “Whoever was doing it before wasn’t there, so I volunteered to do it. I had always wanted to do it, and I immediately fell in love with it. When the regular school session started, I ended up being the only person who wanted to do it, so I was the Fightin’ Christian for three years.”
Durham praised Weckerly for his job inside the costume, which both described as “unique.” In fact, Durham remembered that the school acquired an inflatable version of the mascot — which was known as “Mr. E” to the students — in the mid-1990s, but that version went out of commission in the late 1990s.
“Back in the 80s and 90s, there weren’t a lot of companies that you could gravitate towards to have them make a mascot persona for you,” Durham said. “In the way the industry has evolved in the last 20 years, mascot companies really try to get to know the persona of your school. They want to understand — pun intended — the character of your institution. In the late-80s, when this costume was developed, I don’t know that there were companies that were working with Division II schools to truly get to know what the mascot needed to look like and how it needed to operate.”
Weckerly added, “He looked like an angry Amish man with the bowler hat on, like an old-time fighter. I liked it. The pants tucked into the boots, and the hoola-hoops on the inside of the body form with a sweater over that. The head wasn’t the most secure thing — there was no straps or anything, and I realize that it was a bit old — but I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for it.”
That soft spot has only continued to grow for Weckerly since 1999, when Elon officially became a Division I university. The move to the top level of collegiate athletics brought with it a national spotlight, and led Elon to make some tough decisions.
Making a change
The weight of the first major decision of his presidency still has Leo Lambert laughing to this day. And he knows just how lucky he was.
“When you look back on it, it was probably a completely stupid thing for me to do in my first year,” Lambert said. “If you look at it from that point of view, you’d say, ‘God, really? That’s the first thing you’re going to do? That’s guy not going to last.’”
After officially becoming the seventh president of Elon on January 1, 1999, Lambert put in motion the plan to change the mascot in May, making it a topic for a June Board of Trustees meeting. But before he made up his mind, then-Vice President for Academic Affairs Julianne Maher let him know of the stakes of this choice.
“She handed me an article that was titled something like, ‘College presidencies that have been sacrificed on the altar of college mascots,’” Lambert recalled. “It is an ugly history — usually, trying to change a mascot spells the end of a presidency.”
But the Board of Trustees didn’t give Lambert much of a choice, with him recalling the board saying they “should’ve never left this for a new president.” Lambert felt the backlash from the local community, but focused on a 1999 men’s basketball game as a sign that finalized the decision to him.
“I remember going out to Notre Dame for when Elon played Notre Dame the year before we changed the mascot, and it was the Fightin’ Christians versus the Fightin’ Irish,” Lambert said. “Not everybody understood Elon was founded by the Christian church and we were the FIghtin’ Christians. It worked locally, but it did not work nationally. People laughed at it. That’s not what you want to get out of your mascot, derisive laughter.”
Elon formed a 15-member task force and partnered with SME Powerbranding to work on developing a new identity. To Lambert, the timing of the move — with Elon just starting in Division I and opening its first on-campus football stadium — could not have been better.
“We felt if there was ever a time to change the mascot, this was the time,” Lambert said. “And, at the time, nobody wore Fightin’ Christians gear. You look at how much students were Elon gear, that’s a huge sea change from the old days. People did not use to wear school colors that much, but they do now.”
Name suggestions from the community focused on three things specific to Elon: trains, oak trees and fire. ‘Crusaders’ was a popular choice, but that option wasn’t in play for many reasons.
“I overheard a conversation one time in the Acorn [Coffee Shop], and someone said, ‘Is Elon a church-related institution?’ And someone replied, ‘Well, they used to be, but they changed their mascot,’” Lambert said. “It’s a very revealing comment because we still have a proud, historical relationship with the United Church of Christ, and that has not changed. But people ascribe that mascot change to more than a mascot change.”
Wills added, “They’d hear Fightin’ Christians and say, ‘So y’all are like Liberty?’ But we’re not like Liberty. We’re close with the United Church of Christ, but we’re not a Christian school.”
In the end, Elon went with the Phoenix, something Lambert has felt was the best decision the school could’ve made.
And, to this day, Lambert still considers it a major goal of the institution to get the Phoenix name associated with Elon all across the country and the globe.
“When we’re trying to change a mascot, you want to change a mascot and have a brand,” Lambert said. “We’re about a brand identity and introducing a brand identity to all sorts of new markets. You want to have a sharp, brand identity, and we are the Elon Phoenix.
“Elon is a national and international institution. We’re not a local institution anymore. Things have to be evaluated in an international context.”
A proper send-off, a stolen artifact
With the official change occurring in the summer of 2000, Elon needed to find a way to make the transition as seamless as possible. Lambert credits Mark Albertson with the idea to give the Fightin’ Christian a proper graduation.
“The plan was, we got through the last graduate, and Mark got up to the microphone and said, ‘Mr. President, we have made a mistake. We forgot to call a student’s name,’” Lambert said. “I thought that was a pretty cool way to transition our mascot into the alumni ranks.”
Albertson: “As the Registrar of Elon College for the past 22 years, I never had this problem before. But it seems I overlooked one of our graduates. Sorry, Mr. President. It must be that he has taken 78 years to complete his requirements.”
Francis: “President Lambert, we do have a student that we skipped. The following student has completely the requirement for his degree and I present the last graduate of the Class of 2000, The Fightin’ Christian mascot.”
*applause as Fightin’ Christian receives diploma*
Francis: “Mom and dad, be happy that your child did not take 78 years.”
With Albertson and Provost Gerry Francis providing colorful commentary, the Fightin’ Christian mascot emerged from behind the curtain to receive his diploma, 78 years after he was introduced as the official mascot of Elon College. It’s something that Durham suggests to any of his clients that go through mascot changes.
“Elon was brilliant in orchestrating the graduation in May 2000,” Durham said. “It’s still the best practice — when I’m working with schools throughout the country, if it applies, I bring this up as a best-case example. To be able to tactfully and gracefully retire your mascot? I thought the graduation was fantastic.”
Even Weckerly, who felt that the mascot change was “a little bittersweet,” felt the graduation ceremony was “a neat thing” when he saw it in the newspaper.
But by the time the Fightin’ Christian was graduated, the costume itself was really beat up, with the body worn down from years of the use and the head still without straps. With Elon needing to bring the Phoenix into the forefront, the mascot was put away, with the body of the costume likely disposed of.
Meanwhile, the costume head for the Fightin’ Christian was moved into a display case in the Atkins Room, a conference room on the second floor of Alumni Gym that holds a significant portion of the Elon Sports Hall of Fame’s memorabilia. Wills cut the back of the clunky head off so no one could wear it again.
But then, sometime around 2004 or 2005, Wills walked into the Atkins Room to find the Fightin’ Christian mascot head missing.
“We came in the next morning and the door was slid open and the head was gone,” Wills said. “But they didn’t take anything else, and they didn’t break anything.”
To this day, the whereabouts of the mascot head are unknown, and Lambert hadn’t even realized that it was missing. The only thing Elon has in any of its archives is a paper mache Fightin’ Christian mask from the 1970s that someone donated to the school.
And while Elon will remain the Phoenix for the foreseeable future, Elon still would like to have the Fightin’ Christian mascot head to display.
“We should put something out on Facebook saying, ‘If you have the Fightin’ Christian head, please return it,’” Wills said.
“It’d be cool as hell if we could get it back.”
