Wednesday, August 19, 1998

No more student princes at old Heidelberg

By Andy Cole
Sports Writer

The indicator is subtle enough to be missed. One little line in the Ohio Athletic Conference media guide under Heidelberg College.

Nickname: The 'Berg.

Just like that, for better or worse, something that the athletic teams at Heidelberg have used as just a side name has become the moniker for the school. When the Heidelberg College football, volleyball, cross country and soccer teams take the field or floor for the first time this fall, they'll be the first in 62 years not to take the field as the Student Princes.

''No consensus could be reached on another nickname, and the football team has called itself The 'Berg for a decade,'' said Toby Boyce, the new Sports Information Director at Heidelberg College. Boyce, who has writen for newspapers in Mount Vernon and Alliance, graduated from Mount Union College in May. He took over as SID Friday.

Heidelberg became known as the Fighting Student Princes in 1926, thanks to Heidelberg Alumni Director Edwin R. Butcher. Butcher picked it up from the film ''The Student Prince of Heidelberg,'' in which the main character was a young German prince, and the name fit well considering Heidelberg's German ties. It replaced the Cardinals as the nickname for the college athletic teams at Heidelberg.

'''Berg is on the side of the football team's helmets, and some of the athletes call the teams that, anyway,'' Bryce said. ''Several people from the athletic department were in on this decision, and they all said the same kind of thing.

''The committee looked at over 1,000 nicknames, some of them were taken seriously and some of them weren't,'' Boyce said. ''The 'Berg was already here in some aspects and (the committee) felt that it went well with the school. The 'Berg will be the nickname, but the Student Prince may remain our mascot. We'll have to wait until the cheerleading advisor gets on campus to decide that.''

The committee Boyce refers to is actually two committees. A group met for five months to discuss the issue and came to the conclusion that a definitive answer was not possible in that amount of time. The final committee, composed of 15 alumni, coaches, students and administrators, kicked around numerous ideas, in the end deciding that The 'Berg was the name to go with.

''We had literally every nickname in front of us,'' Director of College Relations Jamie Abel said. ''We got names from professional, minor league, college and high school teams from every sport. Whatever we could find, we got just to have everything out there. We considered the entire range of names.

''The question before the committee was 'Is there a problem with the Student Princes?' There were people coming from all different kinds of viewpoints. There were some people who didn't want the mascot to show too much aggression, and that eliminated some of them. We didn't want the name to be gender specific. 'Lady Student Princes' is awkward and the same was true with 'Student Princesses'.''

Heidelberg women's basketball coach Karen McConnell doesn't neccessarily think that 'Student Princes' bothered her players, but also listed why the committee thought a change was needed anyway.

''I don't think my players were ever offended at all by the nickname,'' said McConnell, who herself was an athlete at Heidelberg. ''They think of themselves as Heidelberg athletes. It all depends on how you look at 'Student Princes'. There used to be a guy who would lead the football team onto the field with a horse, and that's how people thought about it. We've had somemascots who represented it in a different way. This way, we can keep the mascot the same.

''There are still people who call us the Tri-Color and the Hilltoppers, which were side nicknames in the '60s, so we'll still always be the Student Princes no matter what to a lot of people. There's a lot of tradition here, and there were a lot of people who didn't want to see the nickname go. This is a nice solution because it appeases every group. It's a new nickname, but it still sticks to the tradition in a lot of ways. This was a long process and I don't see it coming up again in the near future.''

Trying to stick to the tradition was one of the main objectives of the committee. At the same time, the group was charged with the task of determining if the nickname was outdated. Compromise soon became the name of the game for everyone involved.

''In some regards, it was a no-win situation, but I think we reached a compromise,'' Abel said. ''We fought the politically correct battle and argued things that way and we could have gone on for years. We tried to get representation from everybody and I think we reached a comprimise that everyone's going to be able to live with.

''In any event, we didn't want to assign a name just to assign one, or get to the point where we were just scrambling to attach any old name,'' he said. ''We wanted to keep with the tradition and have something that had something to do with Heidelberg. For instance, the 'Rocks' was mentioned, because of Rock Creek. It was a long and difficult process, but I think we came up with something that's kind of the best of both worlds.''