For the second time this month, a familiar team with a new nickname is coming to town to play the Seawolves.
First, it was the University of North Dakota hockey team, long known as the Fighting Sioux and now called the Fighting Hawks.
Now, it's the Northwest Nazarene volleyball team, which has dropped the nickname Crusaders to become the kinder, gentler Nighthawks, who will play UAA Saturday at the Alaska Airlines Center.
A private Christian college in Nampa, Idaho, Northwest Nazarene announced the name change last week — on a day when its golf team was competing, which meant the golfers teed off as Crusaders and signed their scorecards as Nighthawks.
Both schools made the changes to eliminate nicknames that had been deemed offensive.
After nearly a decade of resistance, North Dakota in 2016 joined the list of colleges that changed their nicknames following a 2005 NCAA crackdown on Native American nicknames and mascots.
The NCAA policy didn't impact Northwest Nazarene's use of the Crusaders nickname. Instead, the impetus for change came from students and alumni.
In announcing the change, Northwest Nazarene officials said the school began debating the nickname years ago because of the violence and destruction often associated with it. A crusader was the name given to Christian fighters in the Crusades, a series of religious wars in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.
"The Board of Trustees acknowledged that a crusader was historically understood as one who is committed to a worthy cause," the school said in a statement issued Oct. 16, the day the change was made official. "However, the board observed that more recently there has been a growing diversity of opinion regarding the mascot and nickname. Students, campus community members, and alumni have expressed concern with the nickname and mascot because of its association with violence and destruction."
The statement said the board settled on the nighthawk because it wanted "an animal common to the area but not already used as a mascot and nickname by other schools."
Nighthawk is also the name of several Marvel Comic characters, the world's first stealth fighter jet and an American manufacturer of pistols, revolvers and shotguns.