The Stonehill Skyhawks are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent
Stonehill College
Stonehill College is a Private college, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Easton, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1948 by the Congregation of Holy Cross and is located on ...
, located in
Easton, Massachusetts
Easton is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 25,058 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Greater Boston area.
Easton is governed by an elected Select Board. Open Town Meeting acts as the legislative branch ...
, in
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
sporting competitions. All current Skyhawk athletic teams compete at the
Division I level, with most being members of the
Northeast Conference
The Northeast Conference (NEC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Teams in the NEC compete in Division I for all sports; football competes in the Division I Foo ...
(NEC). Stonehill has been a member of the NEC since 2022.
On April 5, 2022, Stonehill announced it was accepting an invitation to join the NEC at the
NCAA Division I
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of College athletics, intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major ...
level, effective in the fall of 2022. Prior to 2022, Stonehill was a founding member of the
Northeast-10 Conference
The Northeast-10 Conference (NE-10) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. Member institutions are located in the northeastern United States in the states of ...
in
NCAA Division II
NCAA Division II (D-II) is an intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It offers an alternative to both the larger and better-funded Division I and to the scholarship-free environmen ...
.
History
Skyhawks nickname
In late 2002, The Strategic Planning Committee determined that the previous Stonehill College mascot, the chieftain, was
disrespectful to Native Americans and decided that it would be changed. The committee ruled that a new mascot be named as the institution's athletic identity. Therefore, in the following year the college held open forums in which students, alumni, and faculty were asked to submit ideas for the new identity, vote on suggestions, and gauge popularity. Among popular choices were: "Summit"; "Skyhawks"; "Saints"; "Wolfpack"; "Crusaders"; "Mission"; "Shovelmakers"; and "Blizzard".
During the fall semester of the 2005 academic year Stonehill College officially changed the name of its athletic teams to the "Stonehill Skyhawks", with a brand new mascot known as 'Ace', an anthropomorphic purple hawk wearing a scarf, goggles, bomber jacket, and an aviator cap. The actual name 'Skyhawks' is not a reference to either a bird or animal. After the school's property was bought by the Congregation of Holy Cross, the airfield was leased to the Navy during World War II and private companies before and after the war until it was closed in 1955 due to increasing student enrollment. The Navy used the field for training exercises and would employ the
Skyhawk aircraft between 1954–1995.
Varsity teams
Stonehill currently sponsors 23 varsity sports. Most recently, the school has added women's swimming and diving and women's ice hockey as varsity sports. Swimming and diving began in 2020–21 and women's ice hockey will begin in 2022–23. The women's ice hockey team will play in the
New England Women's Hockey Alliance
The New England Women's Hockey Alliance (NEWHA) is a women's college ice hockey conference in the United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. As of the current 2022–23 season, the conference is made up o ...
.
List of teams
Men's sports (9)
*Baseball
*
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
*Cross country
*
Football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
*
Ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
*Soccer
*Tennis
*Track and field (indoor & outdoor)
Women's sports (14)
*
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
*Cross country
*Equestrian
*Field hockey
*Golf
*Ice hockey
*Lacrosse
*Soccer
*Softball
*Swimming & diving
*Tennis
*Track and field (indoor & outdoor)
*Volleyball
National championships
Team
Facilities
The Sally Blair Ames Sports Complex is home to the College staff that sponsors eight intercollegiate club teams featuring
Ultimate
Ultimate or Ultimates may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Albums
* ''Ultimate'' (Jolin Tsai album)
* ''Ultimate'' (Pet Shop Boys album)
*''Ultimate!'', an album by The Yardbirds
*''The Ultimate (Bryan Adams Album)'', a compilatio ...
,
Rugby
Rugby may refer to:
Sport
* Rugby football in many forms:
** Rugby league: 13 players per side
*** Masters Rugby League
*** Mod league
*** Rugby league nines
*** Rugby league sevens
*** Touch (sport)
*** Wheelchair rugby league
** Rugby union: 1 ...
, Lacrosse and
Golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
as well as an extensive intramural sports program offering
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
,
Soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
,
Floor Hockey
Floor hockey is a broad term for several indoor floor game codes which involve two teams using a stick and type of ball or disk. Disks are either open or closed but both designs are usually referred to as "pucks". These games are played either on ...
and
Flag Football
Flag football is a variant of American football where, instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a Down (gridiron football), down. The sport has a ...
.
W.B. Mason Stadium is a 2,400-seat, multipurpose sports stadium. Opened in 2005 at a cost of $4 million, it is the home of Skyhawk football, lacrosse, field hockey, and track & field.
W.B. Mason
W.B. Mason is an American business products company headquartered in Brockton, Massachusetts. They are widely known for their colorful fleet of delivery vehicles.
The company was founded in 1898 and started out selling rubber stamps and stencil ...
, an office-supplies dealer based in nearby
Brockton, Massachusetts
Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States; the population is 105,643 as of the 2020 United States Census. Along with Plymouth, Massachusetts, Plymouth, it is one of the two county seats of ...
, and its alumni employees contributed $1.5 million toward the project.
[W.B. Mason Stadium]
Stonehill College official website.
The stadium was dedicated on September 10, 2005.
The playing field is named Timothy J. Coughlin Memorial Field, in honor of a 1980 Stonehill alumnus and football captain who was killed when the North Tower of the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
was
destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Most of the seating is bleacher-style; the two midfield sections have stadium seating with seat-backs.
After the stadium's formal dedication on September 10, 2005, Stonehill defeated
Pace University
Pace University is a private university with its main campus in New York City and secondary campuses in Westchester County, New York. It was established in 1906 by the brothers Homer St. Clair Pace and Charles A. Pace as a business school. Pac ...
17–13 in the first football game played in the new stadium.
Individual sports
Football
On Saturday, September 8, 2012, the Skyhawks defeated
Southern Connecticut State University
Southern Connecticut State University (Southern Connecticut, Southern Connecticut State, SCSU, or simply Southern) is a public university in New Haven, Connecticut. Part of the Connecticut State University System, it was founded in 1893 and is g ...
for the first time in 15 years, by a score of 13–0. In addition to breaking the losing streak, Stonehill also became the first team to shut out the Owls in 12 years.
On Thursday, October 18, 2012, Stonehill hosted the
University of New Haven Chargers in Stonehill's first ever nationally televised football game, broadcast as part of
CBS Sports Network
CBS Sports Network (a.k.a. CBSSN) is an American pay television network owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global. When it launched in 2002 as the National College Sports Network (later College Sports Television also known as ...
's Thursday night Division II game of the week. The game drew an overcapacity crowd that saw heavily favored New Haven win 45–41 on a last-second touchdown pass.
Stonehill : #3/6 New Haven Rallies Late to Top Stonehill, 45–41
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References
External links
*
{{Massachusetts Sports