After 40 nameless years Towson’s mascot was finally given an official identity it could call its own when “Doc” was selected from a name-that-mascot contest that drew over 1,000 submissions.
A few earlier, random suggestions such as Mr. Tiger in the 1964 Tower Echoes yearbook and Sergeant Stripes in the 1980’s failed to catch on. In 2003 the University community was invited to submit choices for a potential name for its mascot. A committee composed of Student Government Association members, faculty and staff culled through the entries, narrowing the list to a few before the SGA unanimously approved the moniker “Doc” which won out over other such suggestions as Roary, Minnegan, Tony, Hoke, Tank and Stripes.
Doc was introduced for the first time on April 26, 2003 during halftime ceremonies of the Towson-Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse game. The name honors Towson’s first athletics director, Dr. Donald I. Minnegan.
“Doc did so much for our school, so what better way to honor him than to name our very own tiger after him,” SGA vice-president Jessica Machen told the student newspaper,
Towerllght.
With one of the longest tenures in the history of college athletics, Doc’s association with Towson spanned 50 years as a teacher, coach and athletics director. He arrived on campus in 1927 as a part-time faculty member. In 1947, after earning his doctorate from George Washington University, he was called “Doc” by athletes, students, alumni and colleagues. Doc departed in 1977 as a full professor and athletic director emeritus. As an administrator he was instrumental in adding a number of sports, including football and lacrosse, to an athletics program that today numbers 19 varsity sports comprising more than 500 student-athletes.
Doc coached soccer, basketball, swimming, track and baseball during his half-century at Towson but the 39 years he spent directing men’s soccer contributed the most to his legendary career. His teams compiled a 231-137-34 record that included four Maryland Intercollegiate Soccer League titles and one Mason-Dixon Conference championship. His 1954-55-56 teams lost once in 27 games.
He developed an international reputation and remains one of a select few Americans ever to publish in the
English Football Association Yearbook. In January, 1993, the National Soccer Coaches Association (now the United Soccer Coaches) cited Doc's life's work in a sport he never played competitively by inducting him into its Hall of Fame. He also was inducted into the Maryland Soccer Hall of Fame in 1983. In 1964, he was an alternate manager for the U.S. national team. He is a member of Towson’s Hall of Fame, an organization conceived in 1963 that he helped to develop.
Doc grew up in Illinois, playing football, not soccer. Educated at a normal-school, his first teaching assignment found him in a one-room school in his hometown of DeKalb. Later he taught and coached high school in Lisbon, Ill., before earning a bachelor's degree from Springfield (Mass.) College, where he was introduced to soccer. In 1932, he received a master's degree at New York University.
Doc’s influence stretched beyond the campus borders. As a consultant he pioneered Baltimore County’s school-based recreation system that would be emulated nationwide. He was appointed the recreation board’s first chairman in 1947. Twenty years later its longtime director, Hubert I. Snyder, praised Doc as “one of the most brilliant thinkers I have ever met in the field of recreation and athletics.”
In the late 1940’s the United States sent Doc to Europe to teach soccer to American troops, and then to Korea where he set up physical education programs. During World War II he assisted in directing youth sports programs for the state of Maryland.
Doc passed away on August 13, 2002, just two weeks shy of his 100
th birthday. Minnegan Field in Johnny Unitas Stadium, and the Minnegan Room located in the Field House, are named in his honor.
