Today's guest post comes from Rev. Ashlee Alley
We like cats on the campus where I work in campus ministry. The pet kind. Calicos, tabby cats, but especially black cats. Yep…the ones that are supposed to bring you bad luck. For us, they are actually good luck. You see—it has to do with our mascot (stay with me, here…it’s a little confusing). Our nickname at Southwestern is the Moundbuilders, but our mascot is The Jinx—you got it, a black cat! So…while you may have a Wildcat or Panther, or even a Bobcat, we have The Jinx. The Jinx came about through a fun and (mostly true) story about how we beat a rival football team on Halloween one year in the early 1900’s. So says tradition: our players put a tombstone on the goal line with a black cat and the other team’s name on it. After we won, our guys carried it around, only to get it out again the next year. And the next. And the next! After 14 years of victory on our part, the rivals thought that we had really put a jinx on them! And so…The Jinx was born! Anyway, that’s much easier to visually represent than a Moundbuilder, anyway!
