Seton Hall Pirates Tickets

About The Seton Hall Pirates

Bishop Bayley named the university after his aunt, Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born Catholic saint. The school’s main campus was originally in Madison, NJ; Reverend Bernard J. McQuaid was the college’s first president and had a staff of four diocesan clergy that included Reverend Alfred Young, the Vice President; Reverend Daniel Fisher, who became the college’s 2nd president and 5 lay instructors. At first, the college only had 5 students: Leo G. Thebaud, Louis and Alfred Boisaubin, Peter Meehan and John Moore. By the end of the 1st year, the student body had grown to 54. By the 1860s, Seton Hall College continued its quick growth and started enrolling more and more students every year. There were quite a few fires on campus, though, which caused the growth to slow. The first of numerous strange fires in Seton Hall’s history happened in 1867 and destroyed the college’s first building. Then, on March 9, 1886, another fire destroyed the university’s main building; in 1909, another fire destroyed a classroom and several dormitory buildings.

In the 19th century, even with setbacks, financially tight times and the American Civil War, the College continued its expansion; they opened a military science department, which was the predecessor to the ROTC program, during the summer of 1893. The program was disbanded, though, during the Spanish-American War. Seton Hall’s sports teams are the Pirates and they participate in the NCAA’s Division I and the Big East Conference. The college established its first basketball team in 1903; and the school cancelled the football team, which played in Division III, in 1982. The school is best known for its men’s basketball team, which won the National Invitation Tournament in 1953. All of the school’s sports teams have their home field on the South Orange campus, except the men’s basketball team, who play at Newark’s Prudential Center. The school’s fight song is “Onward Setonia” and is played by the University Pep Band at all Men’s and Women’s basketball home games. It is generally played when the team comes onto the court and at the end of the first half and end of the game.