It came out of nowhere and startled revellers at UFV’s recent ‘party on the green’. The brand-new UFV Cascade Athletics mascot — a giant hairy sasquatch — appeared on campus last month and sightings have since been reported all over the Fraser Valley. It seems that the creature has taken up residence in the university’s athletics facilities and is quite comfortable there. As such, the administration and student body feel obliged to give it a name.

That’s where you come in. Help name the UFV Cascades Athletics sasquatch mascot and, if your suggestion is chosen, you could win a night at the Ramada Plaza hotel, dinner for two at an Abbotsford restaurant, and an all-sport family pass to Cascades games during the 2009-2010 season.

To enter, send your proposed mascot name and the rationale for the name via email to dale.cory@ufv.ca by Friday, Oct. 30. 2009.

Why a sasquatch? The origin of the word ‘sasquatch’ comes from a Chehalis word meaning ‘wild man’.

They are quasi-human, hair-covered, tall (up to 15’), and powerfully built. Clearly, sasquatch are not social creatures and are known to frighten humans away with displays of territorial assertion…much like our mighty Cascades student-athletes on the courts, fields, courses, and waterways of the Fraser Valley. BC has been a fertile location for sightings of sasquatch over the years.

Within the Fraser Valley alone, sightings have been reported since the 1800s at Pitt Lake, the Upper Pitt River Valley, Stave Lake, Harrison Lake, Chehalis, Port Douglas, the Hemlock Valley, Chilliwack, Chilliwack Lake, Yale, Deroche, Ruby Creek, and Hope.

A specimen was even reportedly captured alive in Yale about 150 years ago. Including the ancient Aboriginal sasquatch legends, the creature has a local history that dates back thousands of years. About the UFV Cascades UFV Athletics teams wear the name Cascades in honour of an ancient legend of power, strategy, and triumph.

The Cascade Range is a mountainous region noted for its chain of tall volcanoes that run along the west coast of North America and form part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Local myths speak of the mountains as chiefs, who waged war by heaving fire and stone at one another. The name conveys strength, longevity, and fierce raw power.