Originally, the Johns Hopkins athletes were not called Blue Jays but the Black and Blue, a nickname derived from their athletic colors. Hopkins archivist James Stimpert has theorized that the Blue Jay name stemmed from Hopkins' student humor magazine, The Black and Blue Jay, first published in 1920. The "Black and Blue" came from the athletic colors and the "Jay" most likely stood for first initial in Johns Hopkins.
During the 2021–22 season, the Blue Jays' basketball team, spearheaded by head coach Josh Loeffler, recorded a 23–4 record, ranked first in the Centennial Conference or region.
The Blue Jays men's soccer team has won eight Centennial Conference Regular Season titles along with another four ECAC titles previously to joining the Centennial Conference in 1993. The team has reached the NCAA tournament 12 times in the program's history. The team is currently on a streak of 16 winning seasons and has had over 20 All-American selections.
Hopkins also has an acclaimed fencing team, which has ranked in the top three of Division III teams in the past few years and in 2007 defeated the University of North Carolina, a Division I team, for the first time. The Swimming team also has ranked in the top two of Division III for the last 10 years. Hopkins also has a century-old rivalry with McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College), playing the Green Terrors 83 times in football since the first game in 1894.
Johns Hopkins' latest team to encounter postseason success is the school's baseball team. Although Johns Hopkins baseball regularly wins the Centennial Conference regular season and tournament titles, 2008 was the first time since 1989 that the Blue Jays made it to the College World Series for Division III baseball, hosted in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Blue Jays finished runner-up to Trinity College, losing the championship game. In addition, Johns Hopkins Baseball made it to the D3 College World Series in 2010 (5th place finish) and 2019 (3rd place finish).
The Blue Jays were the first regular U.S. baseball team to play in the Soviet Union. In June 1988, they played three games in Moscow.[5] They were also the first team to play with a Soviet baseball team on the American soil, on October 13, 1988, in Baltimore, Maryland, against the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology varsity team.[6]
The women's cross country team has experienced great success in recent years, finishing 7th at the NCAA championship in 2009 and 2010. The cross country and track & field teams have also had several All-American runners in the past few years. In 2012, the women's cross country team beat out top-ranked MIT to become the first women's program in Johns Hopkins history to win an NCAA championship. They also won the NCAA championship in 2013 and 2014, giving them 3 championships in just 8 appearances.
The Johns Hopkins women's volleyball team won their 1st Centennial Conference Title in 2011. The volleyball team has 4 NCAA All-Americans.
NCAA team championships
Johns Hopkins has won 22 NCAA national championships:[7]
