As we close in on the first half of the UAAP, by now we know that our teams have specific names or “monikers” as they call it.
For example, the badminton team are called the Green and Lady Shuttlers. For the chess team, the Green and Lady Woodpushers, and so on and so forth. These monikers provide teams a sense of individuality, a label, an identity. But once you bring all of these varsity teams together, you have the De La Salle Green Archers.
I recently started covering basketball and we know that before the game starts, the announcer introduces both teams using their given moniker. You see, when I watch the games on television, I don’t really notice the introductions being made. It wasn’t until I heard it upfront that I started wondering why our basketball team gets the privilege to use the collective name Green Archers. I didn’t see it as unfair at first. I was just really curious as to why they don’t have a different team name that was more fitting for their sport just like the rest. And no, I don’t only mean this for our basketball team. This also goes for the other basketball teams in the UAAP.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one curious about it, so I went around asking a few athletes from different sports about their opinions on their monikers and if they would prefer being called the Green Archers as well. Some, if not most of who I asked, didn’t even care about their moniker. One person from the Lady Shuttlers told me that she doesn’t mind having different names for different teams, since to her, it gives “dynamics” as well as “harmony.” I agreed to this concept since it would also be confusing to distinguish teams if they were all called the “Green Archers.” I mean, which team would you be pertaining to?
On the contrary, there were also athletes who didn’t like their team monikers. I was doing an interview for an article when I asked them out of curiosity if they liked their monikers. Both interviewees disagreed and said that it was unfair how the basketball teams get to be called the Green and Lady Archers, while their team gets to be stuck with a name people don’t really identify with. One of them said “We are all Green Archers and we all represent the same school. I mean, when you say the Green Tankers, no one really knows who they are or where the Tankers are from,” which again, is actually agreeable to me. They could have come up with a better name that would better describe our swim team.
I also struck another conversation with one of the previous captains of the men’s football team. He was the one who first expressed his disagreement with the team monikers a while back, and we even debated on it for a while. He said that it’s unfair how the basketball team gets labelled the Green Archers while others have names that represent their sport (e.g. Judokas, Jins, Spikers, etc.). He mentioned that if he had to stick to the monikers, then maybe they should start changing how they call the basketball team as well. Something like Green and Lady Hoopers, or Shooters, and the like. It would be fairer that way wouldn’t it? At least it would be for all of us.
Then again, it has already been established that the basketball team is “more visible” and will always be known as the Green and Lady Archers. People would probably find it weird to suddenly have such a big name replaced for our basketball team. If you had to ask me, I’d say that there’s no problem with the existing monikers, but I’d agree with giving the basketball team a new name. It doesn’t seem right to me. After all, these athletes belong to De La Salle University. I don’t think any team deserves to take the Green Archers for themselves alone.
