Why does Tennessee womens sports have baby blue in the colors?

They won't have baby blue much longer, they also won't be the "Lady Vols" anymore.

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Because when Pat Summitt first started the program from scratch in the early 70s as Graduate Assistant basically, the program received petty monetary support from UT. The program could not afford practice uniforms so Pat went to a local sporting goods store to buy her team practice uniforms with her own money. The only orange jerseys she could find had baby blue borders on the trim and numbers. Hence, the tradition of the Lady Vols incorporating subtle baby blue to honor the program's roots. Hope that helps

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That's pretty neat. It's cool that the founding mother? of an entire tradition and team is still around. I think the blue kinda works tbh

Because frick you, that's why

Because there is such a thing as too much prison rape orange.

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Orangeswarm

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They won't have baby blue much longer, they also won't be the "Lady Vols" anymore.

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Well the basketball team will still be the Lady Vols but the rest of our women will no longer be LVs. It makes no sense whatsoever and pisses me off. Pat Summitt made being a Lady Vol a point of pride for all of our women's teams and it should stay that way. Cutting off all the other women's teams makes it feel like Hart is telling them they don't matter enough to even have a name and that's just wrong.

For example, we all know that women's volleyball isn't a top sport and will never get a large budget in the SEC but neither are a lot of men's sports and that's ok but give these young student athletes some freaking respect instead of making them 2nd/3rd class citizens by taking away their very name.

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Well the basketball team will still be the Lady Vols but the rest of our women will no longer be LVs. It makes no sense whatsoever and pisses me off. Pat Summitt made being a Lady Vol a point of pride for all of our women's teams and it should stay that way. Cutting off all the other women's teams makes it feel like Hart is telling them they don't matter enough to even have a name and that's just wrong.

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SC did the same thing a few years ago.

Men were known as the Fighting Gamecocks
Women were known as the Lady Gamecocks (sometimes unofficially nicknamed Chicks I believe)

All adjectives have since been dropped and everyone is just Gamecocks. Which I don't mind having that unifying title.

Regardless of gender, there is no shame playing under the Vols brand. If you think about it in a literal sense, adding "lady" in front of any title is kinda stupid. You don't refer to a female lawyer as a "lady lawyer".

As for the original question.... It's actually really awesome that Summitt got 'stuck' with baby blue because the university has a very long association with the color blue that we maintain to this day.

tl;dr version coming up (don't tho worry there's lots of pics).

Navy Blue and blues in general have been a part of UT for ages due to our military history. Our military program predates every other public university by several decades and was the first in the nation and as if that weren't awesome enough we're actually called the Rocky Top Battalion (you know you're jelly). We also still sport the old style Dragoon uni at games and still have a Dragoon company:



^^I know that one is small but it's a variation of the Dragoon uniform we used to wear and what we wore when UT sent to help Texas. We are the oldest ROTC program and this particular Dragoon uniform would become quite famous. It's the blue we associate with the US Army in the mid and late 1800s, first as Dragoons and then as Cavalry.

These are the regular band unis (our band was a part of military program which predates our football program. If they look like West Point unis with mods to you that's because they are (our Military Department founder was a West Point grad).):



AND



^^^What you probably can't see very well there is that those unis are not just obviously military in style but actually a dark navy not black.

For perspective, this is the tartan Scotland created for UT (you can see the blue much more easily):



As many of you know Dragoons basically became Cavalry. In the Civil War, the US 2nd Dragoons (the UT and East, TN area soldiers we sent to Tejas) were replaced by the 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry Regiment aka 2nd East Tennessee Cavalry (UNION) as one of the more popular regiments to join as those from Knox, Blount, and other counties joined up, including a great number of UT students.



^^US Veteran funeral flag for the Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.

There are obviously many more military groups I'm leaving out given that Tennesseans, especially East, Tennesseans and UT students really dig this whole blowing shite up thing. If there's a war we are there but y'all get the idea.

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Being a Lady Vol was an mportant distinction because of Summit - also made her recruiting easier too! Those girls wanted that moniker so they went there. ULL in softball has the same distinction as Lady Cajuns and they have their own following! I know some of the girls that went to be Lady Cajuns and they said when they started playing softball they watched and wanted to be Lady Cajuns and they get their recruits all the time - same as being a Lady Vol. Pat Summit wasn't lucky in those recruiting classes!

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+1000 You 'get it.' What I don't think Hart, our tone deaf AD, understands is that these girls/young women WANT to be Lady Vols regardless of what sport they play because Pat Summitt made it so that being a Lady Vol meant something much bigger than simply basketball. It equaled excellence in both sports and in the classroom and gave these girls a sisterhood they were damned proud to be a part of.

Oh and have an upvote.