Give a Coast Guard salute to college football

It won’t be long now until college football season is here. Fans can hardly wait.

A question crossed my mind: Does the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., field a varsity football team? The answer is a resounding “yes.” 

It makes perfect sense then for all of us in Carteret County – an officially designated “Coast Guard Community” – to root, root, root for the Coast Guard Bears.

 

The Coast Guard Academy competes at the NCAA Division III level as a member of the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC).

Other teams in the league are: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass.; U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y.; Norwich University in Northfield, Vt.; Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I.; Springfield College in Springfield, Mass.; State University of New York Maritime College in New York City; and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass.

The big rivalry game for the Coast Guard Bears is the annual contest with the Merchant Marine Mariners to see who takes home the “Secretaries’ Cup.” It’s like Army v. Navy, but on “a smaller academy scale.”

 

The trophy started out as the “Secretary’s Cup” in 1981 when both academies were units of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The cup was “pluralized” in 2003 when the Coast Guard became an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

Today, each academy has an enrollment of about 1,050 undergraduates. 

The Bears’ home stadium is Cadet Memorial Field on the banks of the Thames River in New London. It has a cozy seating capacity of 4,500.

 

The Bears got their nickname in 1926, when the Coast Guard Academy selected the black bear as its mascot, “because the bear is bold and tenacious, attributes befitting the Coast Guard and its officers,” according to the athletics department webmaster.

This prompted a third-year cadet named Stephen Hadley Evans of Clinton, Md., to smuggle a female black bear cub onto campus in 1926. Evans persuaded Cmdr. Harold Hinckley, the Coast Guard Academy superintendent, to allow the young bear to “enlist.” 

The bear was named “Objee,” which is short for “objectionable presence,” in deference to New London’s “objection to the presence” of a live bear within the city limits. 

Cadets embraced Objee. They cared for her. She ate and showered with them. 

But the town folks eventually prevailed. The last in the line of live mascots was Objee XXXI, who was escorted off campus in 1984.

 

Interestingly, Stephen Hadley Evans went on to attain the rank of Rear Admiral and returned to New London to serve as the Coast Guard Academy superintendent from 1960-62. 

Remember Otto Graham? After a spectacular professional football career as the quarterback of the Cleveland Browns (winners of seven league championships in the pre-Super Bowl era), Graham became the head coach and athletic director at the Coast Guard Academy in 1959. 

Cmdr. Otto Graham, left, and Rear Adm. Stephen Evans

The academy’s Otto Graham Hall of Athletic Excellence opened in 2016. One of the Coast Guardsman enshrined is legendary professional golfer Arnold Palmer, who left Wake Forest University during his senior year to join the Coast Guard. He reported for duty in 1951. 

Palmer once said. “The knowledge and the maturity that I gained in the Coast Guard made me a better person. The military isn’t just about restrictions, it’s a learning experience, and it’s very important that young people have that opportunity to learn and to know themselves a little better. I think the military helps put that in the right perspective.” 

Go Bears!