What’s in a Team Name: A Brief History of The Pelham Pelicans

The Pelham Pelicans: Pelican sports, Pelican spirit, Pelican pride. Have you ever played a sport for Pelham or cheered for our student athletes and wondered why our school teams are called the Pelicans?

Before PMHS’s teams became the Pelham Pelicans, they were the Pythian and Beta Teams: Pythian for the Pythian games, part of the Olympiad held in ancient Greece around 586 BCE and Beta, the second letter of the Greek alphabet. The Pythian games included festivities, followed by artistic and athletic competitions, with winners receiving laurel crowns, a tribute to Apollo and later apples as prizes. Then in 1926, a sesquicentennial was held in Pelham in celebration of our nation’s birth, which led the town to focus on local history.  Shortly thereafter, Pelham high school teams were known as the Pelicans.

The history that brought about this change occurred in 1654, when Thomas Pell purchased 9,166 acres that today would include most of the Bronx, Pelham, Eastchester, New Rochelle, Larchmont and Mamaroneck, (all lands east of the Hutchinson River to Mamaroneck) from the Siwanoy (Lenape) Indians.  Legend has it that Pell completed this transaction, by burying his seal with the Pell coat of arms at the base of the Treaty Oak, naming his manor Pelham.  Today at the Bartow Pell Mansion Museum in the Bronx, a wrought iron fence and plaque commemorates this site as the tree was destroyed by fire in 1906.

The description of the Pell coat of arms is ‘ermine, on a canton azure, a pelican or vulned gules’. The pelican represents charity, piety and love with the bird shown on a blue canton or background. Ermine, a fur used in heraldry, patterns the remainder of the coat with the tail upright and the Latin, Deus, Amici et Nos translates to God, Our Friends and Ourselves. The ‘vulned gules’, a pelican with wings aloft is preening itself and nursing a wounded breast, portraying fidelity to obligations or piety.

In medieval times, people believed the bird pierced its own breast to feed its young. Pelicans actually feed chicks by pressing their beak against a sack in the back of its neck, appearing to open its breast.  With its red-tipped beak, the legend evolved that the bird drew blood from its own breast. The pelican is found in Christian, medieval and baroque art and literature, as well as other coats of arms in heraldry and the state seal of Louisiana.

A coat of arms signified achievement and at times throughout history has covered tunics, armor or flown as a banner. Today the Pelican represents our high school teams in many forms, from the angry pelican carrying a lacrosse stick to the traditional pelican emblem on the varsity hockey jersey, a far cry from the original coat when it was commonly portrayed as a mythical bird with the body of a swan and eagle head.

Locally, the Pelican can be found engraved on the four stone pillars surrounding the small graveyard at Bartow Pell, with a framed painting on display inside. The coat of arms is also engraved on the cornerstone of Trinity Church, New Rochelle.

Along with Pelham Memorial High School, many southern schools such as Tulane have the pelican as their team name or mascot. Other schools include Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn.

Go Pelham and be proud to be a Pelican!