1992 and Today
Simmons College tennis team with Stormy, c. 1998.
"Simmons teams-Sharks or Thunderbolts?," 1992.
Simmons College pennant, 2010.
Stormy signs Class of 2018 senior shirt, 2018.
By the early 1990s, many students felt a lack of school spirit on campus. While Simmons Athletics had an unofficial mascot during this time, the thunderbolt, very few students were actually aware of the thunderbolt’s presence on campus. As one student commented in The Simmons News on November 12, 1992:
According to Marybeth Lamb, former Simmons Athletic Trainer, legend has it that Simmons does indeed have a symbol-the Thunderbolts. The symbol, not mascot, came into existence four years ago, before the new sports center opened … When asked, four out of five students were unaware Simmons Athletics were called the Thunderbolts. One student-athlete sees this as ‘an identity crisis for Simmons teams and the athletic department.’
From this confusion and frustration, conversations about the election of a new mascot arose. The Shark quickly became the frontrunner in this race, as it was the unofficial mascot for the field hockey and soccer teams in the early 1990s. The same article in The Simmons News spoke about the origins of the shark, commenting:
The field hockey team, finding themselves without a mascot, took matters into their own hands this season and started calling themselves the Simmons Sharks. The name of the Simmons Sharks came naturally to the field hockey team early in the season, explains senior co-captain Priscilla Kelley, ‘Venessa [van Aalst, co-captain] called me shark breath one day at practice, so I gave her a shark bite,’ Kelley said… Soon the team has an inflatable shark to boast its new mascot, and the name has stuck since then. It has been adopted by the soccer team as well.
Despite the rather comical genesis of this new mascot, many felt the Shark could serve as a broader representative for the College. As Field Hockey Coach Kim Koh commented:
A shark is a silent deadly killer that comes out of nowhere, and in this year of positive change for Simmons athletics you can compare the recent successes of our athletic teams to that silent and deadly killer… you can rally behind a shark because it has personality traits, whereas the thunderbolt is just a symbol.
Identified as a strong contender for the new college-wide mascot, the Simmons Student-Athlete Council held an all-school vote to determine who the victor would be: the thunderbolt or the shark. The shark was officially chosen as the College mascot either in late 1992 or early 1993. The Simmons Shark did not receive its name until March 2011, however, when Office of Student Leadership & Activities sponsored “Shark Week,” an event meant to celebrate the Simmons spirit. During Shark Week, the name Stormy was chosen. How the name came to be is unrecorded, but if rumor is to be believed, the name may have stemmed from the fact that the woman who wore the shark suit was named Storm.