By Cece Razo
Senior Staff Writer
The use of the ‘Lady Barons’ moniker for the women’s athletics teams has come to a sudden, yet previously implemented, end. In hopes of uniting all Franciscan University athletes under one name, the athletics department altered the marketing technique back in 2021, thus ending the Lady Baron term.
I sat down with Assistant Sports Information Director, Aaron Spoelman, for an exclusive interview on the change. Spoelman stated that, “The reasoning behind the change had a twofold reason. The first being redoing the marketing strategy.”
The nature of the new marketing was not described, but the main component of the strategy as reducing the logos in the athletics department — including the Lady Barons logo.
The second reasoning behind the change involved historical background – back in 1972, Title IX was passed to end gender discrimination in sports. This movement mainly allowed women to gather funding for and participate in collegial sports.
Initially, universities were not particularly thrilled, to say the least. For this reason, colleges throughout the country created a separate logo for the women’s teams and added “Lady” or “ness” at the end of the mascot, fearing that the initial brand would be tainted otherwise.
Spoelman assures that “Lady Barons” were not created for this purpose. The new wave of inclusion in which universities were ending the differing logos was a trend that Franciscan wanted to hop on. Spoelman states, “We are proud of our women’s sports and we want to support them under the Barons logo.”
After interviewing Spoelman, I spoke with senior marketing major Elizabeth Seuss, a women’s tennis athlete at Franciscan, to hear her thoughts on the change.
Seuss remarked, “Our team really closely identified as the ‘Lady Barons.’ I know that outside of public media, we’re allowed to use and say it, so it really doesn’t affect us as much. But even still, being told that publicly it was not our identity anymore is what really hit the tee and made us sad.”
She continued, “Personally, as a marketing major, I can understand the decision and why they would want some more brand unification, but it is still really sad. Kind of an end of an era.”
On how the athletics department handled the change, Seuss stated, “We never had any sort of official meeting or discussion between the athletics department and our team. Athletics just reached out and let us know that we weren’t allowed to use the term anymore.”
As more classes graduate, the Lady Barons’ legacy comes to a close. As Seuss stated, this year marks a greater end of the era, but begins a new one as unified Barons.