Sports Hawaii

University of Hawaii athletic director Ben Jay told the Star-Advertiser on Tuesday he is "leaning strongly" toward naming all UH men's intercollegiate sports teams Warriors and all women's teams Rainbow Wahine.

Jay said an official statement on the contentious issue of the UH team nicknames is being drafted and will be released "within the next few days."

RedZone wrote:According to the animals from Ben Jay effective immediately all mens sport are to be the Warriors and the womens sports Rainbow Wahine.

UH Mānoa Athletics Standardizes Nickname For Men’s Sports

HONOLULU – All University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa men’s sports will officially begin using the nickname “Warriors” on July 1, 2013. The university’s women’s sports will continue to be referred to as the “Rainbow Wahine.”

The process of notifying internal and external entities in preparation for the July 1 transition will begin immediately.

“The words – warriors, wahine, and rainbow – represent who we are as a university and athletics department,” Athletics Director Ben Jay said. “By utilizing these two nicknames, we keep with our tradition and are able to have a consistent branding and marketing message.”

Currently, UH’s men’s sports are either referred to as “Warriors” (football, golf, tennis and volleyball), “Rainbows” (baseball) or “Rainbow Warriors” (basketball and swimming & diving). Since 1972, all of the university’s women’s sports have used the nickname “Rainbow Wahine,” (wahine is the Hawaiian word for woman).

“I’ve received feedback from many individuals and groups – coaches, student-athletes, boosters, corporate partners, alumni, businessmen and women – and the common message was consistency and to find an identity,” Jay said. “Our women’s sports have been branded with the ‘Rainbow Wahine’ nickname for 40 years and there’s no confusion there. However, on the men’s side, that’s not the case.”

UH’s men’s sports were nicknamed the “Deans” until the early 1920s. In the final game of the 1923 football season, UH head coach Otto Klum’s squad upset Oregon State, 7-0, at Mo‘ili‘ili Field. During the game, a rainbow appeared over the field. Reporters started calling UH teams the “Rainbows,” and the tradition began that Hawai‘i would not lose a game if a rainbow appeared.

In 1974 the UH football team adopted the nickname “Rainbow Warriors,” however, the university’s use of the name went back a number of years prior to that. In 2000, the football team dropped “Rainbow” from its nickname as did several other men’s programs. The baseball and coed sailing teams are the only teams to currently use “Rainbows” as their primary nickname. Moving forward, both teams will be called the “Warriors.”

The athletics department will continue to use the official “H” logo and “Hawai`i” kapa font.