The official athletics mascot of the Thiel College is the "Tomcat."
Through 1923 Thiel athletic teams were known as the “Huskies”. But in 1924, greatly impressed by the spirit of the Thiel football team, Carnegie Tech head coach Wally Steffen observed that “they played like wild, wild cats”.
This prompted Melvin A. Blair of the Greenville Record Argus to report “Thiel played like Tom’s cats,” in reference to head coach Dr. Thomas Holleran, a Greenville dentist and former all-American at the University of Pittsburgh.
From that point thereafter the Thiel “Huskies” became known as the Thiel “Tomcats”, a tribute to Dr. Holleran.
- excerpt from Dr. Roy H. Johnson's "The History of Thiel College 1866-1974"
