Oakie to Receive Mascot Madness Trophy

04/27/2017

ESF's Oakie the Acorn will be presented with the 2017 SUNY Mascot Madness trophy at 4 p.m. Tuesday, May 2. Last year's champion, Victor E. Knight from SUNY Geneseo, will present the trophy to Oakie during an end-of-the-year celebration on the ESF Quad.

Oakie defeated Victor E. Knight in the finals of the annual mascot contest in a competition that came down to the wire. According to SUNY, the final was decided by a difference of 0.6 percent in the vote totals. Oakie drew support not only from the ESF community, but also the greater Syracuse and Central New York community.

The mascot of ESF's Mighty Oaks athletic teams provided the Cinderella story of this year's competition, defeating mascots from Brockport, Albany, FIT and Farmingdale, proving that it's not the size of the school that's important, but the spirit within the college that counts. ESF is one of the smallest colleges that competed.

ESF will now be home for the Mascot Madness trophy until next year's competition.

Mascots were randomly placed into four SUNY regions and ranked by the number of athletic teams each mascot represents, which determined which mascots compete against each other in each round.

Seed rankings are based on the number of teams that represent a particular campus, with enrollment data used to break any ties. Oakie currently represents 10 men's and women's teams in ESF's growing athletics program.

The intercollegiate athletics program at ESF traces its roots all the way back to 1912, the second year of the college's existence, when students organized a Forestry Club on campus that has sponsored an intercollegiate timber sports team every year since.

Today, students can compete on in soccer, golf, cross country, timber sports (Woodsmen's Team), basketball, track and bass fishing. The Mighty Oaks are a member of the United States Collegiate Athletic Association.

In case of rain, the trophy presentation will take place in the Gateway Center.