Cougar Lore

HOMECOMING THROUGH THE YEARS

Traditions may have changed, but the Cougar Spirit remains the same. 

1946

The University of Houston joins its first official intercollegiate sport conference, the Lone Star Conference, and plays its debut football game at HISD’s Public School Stadium (later renamed Jeppesen Stadium) on Sept. 21. Later in the season, UH celebrates its first Homecoming—dedicated to students and alumni who had served in World War II.

1950s

The Homecoming heyday sees annual torchlit parades, pep rallies, street dances, downtown float competitions and a huge bonfire marking the week leading up to Homecoming—and, of course, the iconic Homecoming dance and crowning of the Homecoming queen. 

1968

Lynn Eusan is crowned the first African American Homecoming queen at UH, making her the first at a predominately white university in the South. Eusan told the Houston Chronicle at the time, “This was the first time Black students on the campus have banded together and really been effective against overwhelming odds.”

1996

UH football didn't bring football back to campus fulltime until 1998. To recognize 50 years of UH Homecoming celebrations, Shasta and Sasha greet the court at halftime in bespoke crowns, and the Cougars prevail 56-49 against 20^th-ranked Southern Mississippi at Robertson Stadium.

2021

Seventy-five years after UH’s first Homecoming celebration, the event has evolved. Students now enter a variety of friendly competitions—like bed races or canstruction—a Spirit Cup competition to construct the best sculpture out of cans of food that are later donated to charity, or the talent show, Strut Your Stuff.

2023

Have a Homecoming memory or photo you'd like to share? We'd love to see them, and so would your fellow Coogs! Send them to magazine@uh.edu.