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.
The school's most prominent sports team is its men's lacrosse team, which has won 44 national titles - nine NCAA Division I, 29 United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association, and six Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association titles. Hopkins' lacrosse rivals include Princeton University, Syracuse University, the University of Virginia, and a budding rivalry with Duke University due to intense recent competition, including one-goal victories over the Blue Devils in both the 2005 and 2007 NCAA Championships and in the NCAA semifinals in the 2008; its primary intrastate rivals are Loyola University Maryland, Towson University, the United States Naval Academy, and the University of Maryland. The rivalry with Maryland is the most prominent in college lacrosse and the two teams have met 105 times. On June 3, 2013, it was announced that Johns Hopkins would be joining the Big Ten Conference as a Sport Affiliate member in Men's Lacrosse starting in 2015. 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, 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 Blue Jays 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. Blue Jays baseball team is particularly notable for being the first ever regular U.S. baseball team to play in the Soviet Union and the first team to play with the Soviet baseball team on the American soil 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 16 NCAA national championships:
