The University’s sports teams had nicknames, but none satisfied. The chap with the best proposal would win $5. Ultimately, Santa Clara stuck with Missionites—the name of the era. But that didn’t last through the fall, when a new proposal generated untamable excitement: Bronco.
A Worthy Nickname
It was Professor of Philosophy Hubert Flynn, S.J. who first suggested a bronco as a mascot in 1923 after he attended a rodeo. The unbroken horse, he said, “is a native Western piece of dynamite, not too large, it is true, but hard as nails, and always game to the core.”
Prunepickers?
Before Santa Clara athletes became Broncos, the school used a number of different nicknames—the Missionites, the Mission Lads, the Friars, and the Prunepickers, for the region’s plentiful orchards and dried fruit industry.
User Adoption
Three days after the idea for a bronco mascot first appears in The Santa Clara on Nov. 7, 1923, the paper fully embraced it—just in time for the Big Little game against St. Mary’s. In fact, the new moniker appeared no fewer than seven times in the next issue’s 8 pages.
What’s with the H?
In the initial pitch for the new name it was suggested the varsity teams be called the “bronchos.” That’s no typo. The “h” persisted for years. And it wasn’t unheard of at the time. Broncho the Horse earned an acting credit in the 1920 silent Western The Lone Hand. The last reference to Bronchos in The Santa Clara is in the mid-1960s.
Thoroughly modern filly
The Broncos became personified in 1976, when Kim (Malley) Belotti ’79 made a papier-mâché horse head to wear to a basketball game. Her dad, Santa Clara Athletic Director Pat Malley ’53, loved the new mascot.
Benny the Bronco, as she was named at the time, went on hiatus when Belotti graduated. But Suzy (Pollack) Loftus ’96 picked up reigns, donning a new costume and rechristened the horse Bucky.