Nine weeks of daily newsletters... and today is our last day. Thank you to everyone that helped contribute to this daily resource. We all hope that you will continue to take the time to pray, play, enjoy the outdoors, workout, care for yourselves and those around you, appreciate our history and learn new things. Don't forget to be flexible. School is officially over for the 2019-2020 school year! Congratulations to the Class of 2020 and welcome to summer break! Summer Reading It's what you have all been waiting for- SUMMER READING! You can find all the summer reading assignments in the Student and Parent Portals at www.stxavier.org or you can click these links: Math Club Awards Click here to view the Math Club Award winners for the 2019-2020 school year. #ProudtobeSmart Take Time for Prayer and Reflection For today's prayer, we invite the entire St. Xavier Community to join us this evening for the Baccalaureate Mass for the Class of 2020. It will be an historic mass—unlike any other in our 189 history! Click on the link below. It will be LIVE TONIGHT @ 7 p.m.:
Seniors Jack Konrad, Johan Martinez, and Daniel Baptist will be offering reflections during the mass on their 4 years at St. X. Please see the promotional video they created for this year's Baccalaureate Mass: https://vimeo.com/418506423
Benny and The Bank Vault TV Series on Netflix to Check Out: The Good Place
DAD JOKE OF THE DAY ยท What's an astronaut's favorite part of a computer? The space bar.
QUARANTINE JOKE OF THE DAY Whoever owes you money, go to his house now. He should be home. Service Award Winners Congratulations to our class of 2020 service award winners! Over their four years, these students took the school motto "men for others" to heart and prioritized their commitment to St. X community service activities.
The following students faithfully serving in at least five activities and were awarded the Paul Lammermeier Service Award:
Carter Abercrombie, Zach Bierman, Zach Brinks, Steven Diersing, Alex Hill, Jack Kemper, Drew Klas, Evan Mayhan, Andrew Perry, Thomas Sieder, Aiden Turner and Josh Wiedemann
The next set of students were given the Pedro Arrupe Service Award for faithfully serving in at least seven activities:
Britt Caudill, Justin Finkelstein, Evan Hall, David Molinsky, Leo Rainey, Ryan Ray and Reif Richardson.
Thank you to all of the seniors for all of your hard work in bettering our community! A Strings Performance St. X string students have completed the fourth quarter and semester without interruption despite moving classes online. Forty-three students spread across four classes have uploaded videos of themselves developing their skills on violin, cello, or guitar. Each student recorded three pieces for the quarter for a total of six for the semester. For his final assignment, Charles Isaac '22 was required to learn an "Etude" by Ferdinando Carulli. Click here to listen. Daily Word Puzzle Wednesday's Answer: TRIUMPH THANK YOU FOR PLAYING! Outdoor Cincinnati YOUR OWN FRONT PORCH "If The World Had A Front Porch"- Tracy Lawrence wrote this song in 1994 and he was right! Take the summer to enjoy your own neighborhood. Watch the traffic, wave to a walker, go for a run, listen to the rain, enjoy the nature around you, feel the sun, breathe the air. If it is your own front porch or if you create your own space, find somewhere to enjoy the outdoors and be thankful and happy that you have this chance!
Link to the Library Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 21, 2020 is: cowcatcher noun | KOW-ketch-er Happy birthday to: Zach Auer '20 Matthew Harrington '21 Ethan Macasilli-Tan '23 Evan Mayhan '20 Andrew Monzel '22 Michael Slivinski '20 For Your Health Thoughtful Thursday Work best with checklists? Attached is a check list of ways to take care of your self during the summer! Coach Yauss Daily Workout Get a Deal on Workout Equipment and Help St. X Friday Workout with Coach Yauss Looking for workout equipment and/or gear while you're at home? Our partner BSN SPORTS is offering 20% off and free shipping to the St. X community through May 31. In addition, St. X gets a percentage of all sales! Click here for the link. Topic: ST X Rest/Regen/Restore Time: May 22, 2020 07:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Meeting ID: 896 6063 2485 College Advising Tech Thursday Where was Benny yesterday? Benny was at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Looking for different perspectives on the college admission process? There are a number of blogs out there by college admission directors that offer their advice and thoughts on how to go about searching for colleges at this time. Two that you may want to check out are authored by Directors of Admission at Tulane as well as Georgia Tech. These are applicable to students looking for colleges, regardless of what schools you may be considering. Check them out! Celebrate National Days! Thursday, May 21 National American Red Cross Founder's Day Cream Day St. Xavier Peek at the Past "We'll always be Conquerors. Will we always be Bombers?" These words, written by a disgruntled senior in a Xavier Prep editorial from March 29, 1944, were composed right around the time a new nickname, the Bombers, was giving the Conqueror name a run for its money. With hindsight, the editorial is amusing, even perhaps comical, as we have been Bombers now for over seventy-five years. But we were not always the Bombers, nor were we always the Conquerors.
Perhaps the earliest known mascot of St. X was the Saints, in use since at least the early 1900s. Whether or not this was an official school-sponsored nickname is up for debate, as it seems to have been mainly used by local newspapers in articles detailing athletic contests. Whatever its origins, the Saints moniker more-or-less fizzled into obscurity and disuse by the late 1920s (though the name would sporadically resurface in the ensuing decades as a throwback, with St. X teams sometimes described as the Sycamore Saints).
St. Xavier's second mascot came by way of the student newspaper of the early 1930s, The Conqueror. Before its initial publication in October 1931, the nascent newspaper needed a name first. A contest was held at the school, and the paper's staff found themselves deluged with over 300 submissions from students and faculty alike. The winning proposal of Conquerors, put forth by teacher Edward Wiatrak, SJ, was chosen "because it exemplifies the Spirit of Xavier in sports and in academical achievements." Though The Conqueror would only exist as a publication until 1934, the Conqueror mascot name held fast until its first major challenge almost seven years after its adoption.
March 1938: the student editors of Kampus Kapers, a daily publication containing announcements and general information, issued a call:
"In quest of a new name for our athletics teams, {Kampus Kapers] is starting a contest. For an unknown length of time we have had the title of Conquerors. It is a high-sounding name, but when we lose, it sounds like a flat tire. The contest will be to select the best name for our teams, [and] the prize will be a ticket to the Reds' opener. Give your choice to any Kampus Kapers man or any newspaper boy on the corner at X. We are willing to bet that the class wags who plague instructors with their wise-cracks will not even be heard from."
Suggestions started pouring in within days, presumably even some from the class wags: Terriers, Buccaneers, Rams, Raiders, Blue Comets, Dragoons, Trojans, Greyhounds, Blue Eagles, Gladiators, and Blue Arrows, just to name a few. A vote was held one month later, and after disqualifying suggestions that were "unsigned, illegible, or unfit to print," Kampus Kapers released the results: Conquerors was the clear winner, followed by Trojans and Blue Comets. "The voice of the school says CONQUEROR in overwhelming chorus," Kampus Kapers reported, "CONQUERORS we stand, CONQUERORS we fall."
As it turned out, Conquerors would only stand for six more years. Sometime in the fall of 1943 (against the backdrop of World War II and the Allied bombing of Berlin), local Cincinnati newspapers began to refer to the St. Xavier football team as "Bombers," due in large part to the offensive aerial exploits of quarterback George Ratterman and receiver Charlie Wolf. An article from the October 29, 1943 Cincinnati Post, for example, described the St. X offense as an "aerial circus" that puts on "the best aerial show in these parts."
The upstart Bomber nickname still had a-ways to go, however. Though originating with the football team in the fall, the new mascot truly became a force to be reckoned with during the ensuing basketball season. Once again, the duo of George Ratterman and Charlie Wolf spearheaded a potent offensive force aided by Paul Walther, Herm Hornhorst, and Bill "Whiz" Steenken. The quintet, dubbed the "Swish Kids" due to their shooting abilities, amassed a twenty-game win streak before falling to Middletown in the state quarter-finals.
By the spring of 1944, the combined successes of the football and basketball teams elevated the Bomber nickname to new heights and ensured that its growing popularity could not be ignored. An article from the Xavier Prep queried its student readers, "Bombers or Conquerors? Which do you like?" The article continues,
"During the current school year, the use of Bombers as a nickname for Xavier athletic teams has increased as fast as the number of victories. The public has come to accept this name without a second thought. However, part of the Student Body at St. Xavier and some of its alumni have resented the preference of the new name in place of the 'traditional' Conquerors."
Clearly there was not a consensus concerning the new mascot. But it was only a matter of time. The 1944 and 1945 editions of the X-Ray make use of both nicknames, but the numbers are telling: Conqueror appears in the 1944 annual twenty-five times, but by 1945 its use dropped to nine; by the time the 1946 X-Ray is released, the Conqueror designation disappeared entirely. For its part, the Xavier Prep continued to use the two nicknames interchangeably throughout the 1943 and 1944 school years; for a time, it even featured both mascots in the masthead of its sports page. But in the end, its writers likewise eventually stopped using the Conqueror name.
Seventy-five years later, and here we are: still the unexcelled Bombers of Xavier High. |