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Oakie Wins!
ESF's Oakie the Acorn has won SUNY's Mascot Madness in a competition that came down to the wire against defending champion Victor E. Knight from SUNY Geneseo.
Oakie proved to be 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.
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. Oakie was featured on evening news stories and predominately on popular Syracuse morning radio show Ted and Amy in the Morning on 93Q.
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.