The Skyhawk derives part of its name from the term “sky pilots”: the nickname of the athletic teams at Hall-Moody Institute, which was the first educational institution on the site of the present university before UT Junior College was established in 1927. “Sky pilot” is a frontier description of preachers who traveled in the early 1900s.
The Skyhawk was fashioned from not only the Red-tailed hawks indigenous to West Tennessee, but also after the World War II pilots who were trained at the UT Junior College through a partnership with the Naval War Training Services. Pilots received initial flight training in the 1940s at Gill-Dove Field, which is where the Martin Recreation Complex is now located. The goggles, as pictured on the logo, are a dedication to the pilots who served during the war.
After the University of Tennessee Martin Branch became the University of Tennessee at Martin in 1967, the university has had three mascots: The Pacers, which featured a horse and sulky, before evolving into Pacer Pete and Pace-Her Polly, and then Captain Skyhawk. The mascot re-brand began in 1994 with the hiring of Benny Hollis, the first athletics director for both men’s and women’s programs, who wanted a distinguished, gender-neutral, marketable mascot that could easily be associated with UT Martin.
https://www.utm.edu/news/2020/04/27/ut-martin-celebrates-25-years-of-skyhawk-logo/
