We received a good question via email and it’s been asked so many times that I thought it was worth answering on the blog.
The question …
What is the origin of the Flyer nickname?
The answer …
It comes from Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Prior to this, the Little Falls sports teams didn’t have any nickname; they were just known as the Little Falls High School basketball team or the Little Falls High School football team & etc. Other high school teams around the state didn’t have nicknames, either. The first high school yearbook published (in 1928) after Lindbergh’s flight was dedicated to him and was called “The Flier of Little Falls.” While the sports teams pictured in the book are not yet called the Flyers, this surely was the genesis of the name.
Note the original spelling – “Flier.” By 1946, the date of the next yearbook within the Morrison County Historical Society’s collections, the spelling is “Flyer” and the sports teams all have the Flyer nickname.
Incidentally, we think there were no yearbooks produced for the Little Falls High School between 1928 and 1946 due to the Depression and World War II. Thus far, none have turned up for those years. (If you know of any, we’d certainly be interested in adding them to our collection.)
While we know when the Flyer name came into being, we don’t know when other teams around the state adopted nicknames or whether the naming of the Flyers was part of a larger trend.