UNC Wilmington Seahawks is the name of an athletic program from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a public educational institution, which was established in 1947, and is based in Wilmington. The program is composed of 19 men’s and women’s sports teams, which play in the first division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
NC Wilmington Seahawks athletic program does not have a football team (although has a soccer one), so plays in Division I of the NCAA as a non-football member. Apart from that, all teams of the program but one are members of the Colonial Athletic Association, an intercollegiate athletic conference, which was founded in 1979 and has ten college members, fielding 21 sports. The only NC Wilmington Seahawks team, out of this conference is the women’s beach volleyball club, which competes as a part of the ASUN Conference.
What are NC Wilmington Seahawks?
NC Wilmington Seahawks is the collegiate athletic program of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, which consists of 8 men’s and 11 women’s teams, competing in various sports disciplines, including Track and Field (the men’s team only plays the Outdoor, while the women have both teams), Baseball, Basketball, Swimming and Diving and a few others.
In terms of visual identity, the logo of the NC Wilmington Seahawks has changed dramatically within the last forty years. Coming from a classical badge with a contoured image and no lettering, to the bold modern emblem with the inscription as the main part. The only thing that hasn’t changed in the Seahawks logo throughout the years is the presence of the green color as one of the mains.
The NC Wilmington Seahawks badge, designed in 1977, stayed with the athletic program of the University of North Carolina for eight seasons. It was a simple and traditional contoured image of a flying sea hawk, drawn in thin green lines over a white background. The bird was turned to the right and had its wings spread up high. The feathers on its wings and tail had their ends drawn in bolder lines, putting accents and adding some uniqueness to the whole badge.
The redesign of 1986 introduced a completely different style of the Seahawks logo — with the bold green caricature of a walking bird in a white jersey and cap. The bird looked solid and strong, with its face full of commitment and readiness to fight. On white Jersey, there was a bold green “UNCW” abbreviation set in all capitals of a heavy Handel written sans-serif typeface, with each letter outlined in thin black. No additional lettering was present on the logo.
In 1992 the NC Williams Seahawks logo gets redesigned again, and this time in a modern and abstract manner. The green color gets two new companions: light yellow and bright blue. Now the badge features an image of the bird’s head in profile, facing to the left, enclosed into a half-rectangular frame on the right. The sea Hawk is outlined in bold green lines and has its most part drawn in light yellow, with a vertical triangular element, resembling a high wave, or a wing at the bottom. The whole badge is underlined by a solid green banner with the bold capitalized “UNCW” abbreviation in yellow letters executed in a heavy serif typeface with classic contours.
The redesign of 2015 fully redraws the logo of the NC Wilmington Seahawks athletic program, creating a strong contemporary badge in an intense green, blue and white color palette with small yellow elements. The badge is now composed of three parts: a stylized graphical emblem, the main logotype, enclosed between two arched lines, and a straight horizontal underline in bold capitals.
The Seahawks emblem is based on a triangular crest shape with a sharp bottom and feathery top, and the face of the bird is inscribed into its green frame. The body of the crest is set in solid blue, with the geometric white part above the yellow eyes and beak of the sea Hawk.
As for the lettering, the main “UNCW” part is executed in heavy modern sans-serif typeface with some of the bars softened, and others — straight. The contour of the inscription follows the arched lines, placed under and above it. The “Seahawks” underline uses a simpler and a more solid sans-serif font with geometric shapes of its capital letters, which are set in the same shade of blue as the upper part of the logotype.