Regal the Eagle: JBU's Mascot Matures Over Time

By Rachel Oatman
June 6, 2022

Regal the Eagle: JBU's Mascot Matures Over Time

John Brown University’s mascot has grown a lot since his initial hatching. Today, fans know him as Regal the Eagle, but JBU’s mascot has made a transformative journey in the last 60 years.

In the fall of 1965, the JBU mascot made its first uno"cial appearance. It was the result of a creative home economics student, Janet Dobbs Given ’68.

“I was a big fan of our basketball team and started noticing that several of the schools that came to JBU to play a game had a mascot,” said Given. “I started thinking that we should have one too.”

Because the cheerleading squad had no budget for a mascot, Given made the eagle’s head out of chicken wire and paper mâché in a dormitory kitchen with some friends. The simple costume consisted of a female eagle headpiece, paired with a plain dress. This mascot lasted only for the short period of Given’s undergraduate days at JBU, but even during that limited time, it rallied school spirit and was a part of a successful basketball season that went all the way to the playoffs in 1965.

Although Given left behind the costume in hope that the mascot’s momentum would continue, no one took up the task — at least not until the Toilet Paper Game of 1991. The game marked the official debut of the mascot nearly 30 years later.

Arkansas State Representative Robin Lundstrum, then instructor of health promotion and human performance, recognized JBU’s need for a mascot. She said the thought came to her out of a desire to enrich the college experience of her students.

“You’d go to the games, and it was just like, wait a second — U of A (University of Arkansas) has [a mascot]. The Bulldogs, where I went to high school, they had a mascot … and so I wanted my JBU babies to have everything that every other school had. And why not?” said Lundstrum.

Because of the steep pricing of mascot costumes in catalogs and the fact that most bird costumes resembled a chicken more than an eagle, Lundstrum worked with her mother to create the costume, designed and sewn by hand. Going by the name “Conan the Eagle,” the mascot wore a Golden Eagles basketball sweatshirt, a baseball cap and a towering, white-feathered headpiece. It had bulging eyes and his tongue hung out of his beak.

A decade later, Conan the Eagle underwent a $1,000 makeover. He cleaned up his look with a fully feathered, blue-and-white costume from head to claw with more realistic, balanced features on the headpiece. To complete the transformation, Conan was renamed “Regal the Eagle,” the name still used today.

JBU has traditionally kept the student identity behind the mascot a secret. To keep the mystery alive, this story will refer to student mascots by their years of service as Regal.

Regal 1998-2002, who served as the mascot all four years of his undergraduate career, experienced the physical transformation firsthand.

In an issue of The Threefold Advocate, Regal 1998-2002 indicated to the writer that “the new head was heavier, harder to see out of, but strapped on, is padded and looks better than the old one.” Despite the outward transformations of the mascot over the years, Regal remains the same at heart. From the beginning, Regal has demonstrated the greatest school spirit simply by having fun and loving others.

Summarizing his time as the mascot, Regal 1998-2002 said, “I loved it. I got to be right in the action, courtside.”

Regal 2004-2008, shared similar sentiments. “Being Regal the Eagle … was certainly one of the things I enjoyed most about my time at JBU,” he remarked.

In 2019, during JBU’s Centennial Celebration, the university unveiled a new Regal mascot. Up to this point, Regal more closely resembled a bald eagle with white feathers, but the 2019 Regal now more accurately resembles the brown feathers of a golden eagle.

Regal 2020, who served as the mascot during his graduate studies, shared his favorite memories as the mascot. He had fun joking around with JBU President Chip Pollard, chasing students around campus with a cardboard cutout of Pollard and, most fondly, spotting Micah, a young man from Ability Tree who came to every game. “[Micah] absolutely loved Regal, and so going and being that for him or saying ‘hi’ and giving him a hug just made his week. Doing that was awesome,” said Regal 2020.

Regal 2021-2022 shared how the excitement of kids was a highlight. Additionally, he described the unique privilege to be on the court, to interact with referees and to make others laugh by providing school spirit. Reigning at the top of his fall 2021 season memories, though, was the reintroduction of the traditional Toilet Paper Game after being canceled the previous season due to the pandemic.

Generating laughs and enthusiasm at athletic events has always been an essential part of Regal’s role as the mascot, but he is expanding his presence to nonathletic events.

“There’s a fun energy that Regal can provide,” he said, and this academic year Regal has started to bring that energy to unlikely places, like appearances at prospective student preview days, the dining hall for a pep rallies and for the Irish Studies Program promotional event, where he dressed for the occasion in an Irish kilt.

The transformation of the JBU mascot runs far back into campus history and will continue to become an integral part of the JBU culture on and o! the playing surface. Keep an eye out for Regal the Eagle on the horizon. You never know when or where he’ll swoop in next.

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