What is a Tar Heel? Explaining North Carolina baseball nickname ahead of NCAA super regionals

One week into June, North Carolina’s dream of its first ever baseball national championship remains firmly alive.

The Tar Heels, the No. 4 national seed, have advanced to the super regional round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, where they’ll face West Virginia in a best-of-three series that begins Friday. If they win two games against the Mountaineers, they’ll move on to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska for the first time in six years.

As North Carolina moves closer to a national title and attracts increased attention in that quest, a question arises that residents of the state and graduates of the school have been frequently asked for years: What, exactly, is a Tar Heel?

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Indeed, North Carolina’s nickname is one of the more famous and distinct in college sports, standing out in a landscape overrun with tigers, bulldogs, eagles and huskies. As unique as the moniker is, though, its origins can be a point of confusion or outright ignorance for those who aren’t familiar with them.

As coach Scott Forbes’ team looks to punch its ticket to the CWS, here’s what you need to know about how the phrase “Tar Heel” came to be, why North Carolina adopted it as its nickname and more:

What is a Tar Heel?

The term “Tar Heel” dates back centuries to North Carolina’s early history.

At the time, the state was a leading producer of supplies for the naval industry, churning out things like tar, pitch and turpentine that came from the region’s vast forests of pine trees. Because of that, people from North Carolina were often referred to as “Tarboilers,” with figures as prominent as poet Walt Whitman using the term in the 19th century. “Tar Heel” specifically came from workers who distilled turpentine from the sap of pine trees and burned pine boughs to produce tar. During the hot, steamy summer months, they’d often work barefoot, invariably collecting tar on their heels as they moved around.

Initially, “Tarboiler” and “Tar Heel” were terms of derision meant to refer to individuals as members of a lower, unrefined class.

During the Civil War, the phrase was more widely documented. In the third volume of Walter Clark’s "Histories of the Several Regiments from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861 to 1865", James M. Ray of Asheville noted that during a battle in 1863, a group of North Carolina soldiers successfully continued to fight after a supporting column had retreated. After their victory, they were asked condescendingly by a group of Virginians, “Any more tar down in the Old North State, boys?” to which they responded “No; not a bit; old Jeff’s bought it all up.”

“Is that so? What is he going to do with it?” the Virginians asked.

“He is going to put it on you’ns heels to make you stick better in the next fight,” the North Carolinians shot back.

That same year, after the Battle of Murfreesboro in Tennessee, commanding general John S. Preston praised the 60th Regiment from North Carolina for how far they advanced during the conflict, noting “This is your first battle of any consequence, I believe. Indeed, you Tar Heels have done well.”

In the years following the war, the term went from something of a slur to a badge of pride for those from North Carolina, both inside the state’s borders and beyond them.

By 1893, students at the University of North Carolina started a newspaper they dubbed “The Tar Heel” (now “The Daily Tar Heel”). In a 1912 New York Evening Post story, Josephus Daniels and Thomas J. Pence were cited as two important members of Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign, with the piece referring to them as Tar Heels.

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Why is North Carolina called the Tar Heels?

In the 1880s, when North Carolina began fielding teams that competed in intercollegiate athletics, those squads needed a nickname.

What could have been a drawn-out, perhaps even contentious argument was ultimately one that had little debate, according to the university’s alumni association. The teams would be called the Tar Heels, a label they still wear proudly nearly 150 years later.

What is North Carolina’s mascot?

While Tar Heels is a unique nickname, it doesn’t lend itself well to a mascot, particularly in college sports, where many schools simply use the animal after which their teams are named. North Carolina uses a ram named “Rameses” as its mascot, utilizing both a live Dorset Horn sheep and a member of the cheerleading team in an anthropomorphic costume to fulfill the role.

Credit for the idea goes to former Tar Heels cheerleader Vic Huggins, who in 1924 decided the school needed some kind of animal mascot as its football team was languishing through a difficult season. He opted for a ram, a nod to star fullback Jack Merritt, who was known as the “Battering Ram.” After obtaining $25 from the university, Huggins ordered a live ram from Texas, which first appeared on the sideline of a Tar Heels football game in November 1924.

Since then, it has been a fixture of football games. A costumed Rameses was added to the fold during the 1987-88 basketball season.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: UNC Tar Heel nickname, explained ahead of 2024 NCAA Baseball Tournament