What does it mean to be a ‘Hatter’ in Stetson University
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Students at Stetson University are celebrating the school’s basketball team as they head to March Madness for the first time in program history.
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The team will head to Brooklyn to take on the defending national champion UConn Huskies.
The University hasn’t advanced to this stage of men’s basketball since becoming a Division I program in 1971.
Stetson University’s sports teams are known as the “Hatters,” which has an interesting backstory.
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The name comes after John B. Stetson, owner of John B. Stetson Hat Company in Philadelphia.
It began in 1883 when Henry A. DeLand and Dr. John H. Griffith founded the DeLand Academy in the First Baptist Church lecture room in DeLand.
Three years later, when a freeze affected the citrus industry, it left DeLand in financial distress.
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John B. Stetson had a winter home in DeLand and donated to the school.
The school then made Stetson the chairman of the Board of Trustees in 1889, and the school was renamed in his honor.
The university’s mascot has varied through the years and was built in the image of John B. Stetson with his signature Stetson hat.
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