Bloomfield Township

Unified high school mascot, colors narrowed to three

By Chris Jackett
C & G Staff Writer

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP — With the high school athletic programs set to combine in the fall of 2013, students are voting on what the new mascot and colors will be.

From 7 a.m. Jan. 23 through 11:59 p.m. Jan. 30, seventh- through 10th-graders in the Bloomfield Hills Schools district can log in to Moodle and vote for their preference of the final three in each of the two categories.

The finalists for the school mascot names are the Blackhawks, the Chargers and the Royals. The color combination finalists are black and blue; blue and yellow; and silver, black and purple.

“We’re using the seventh-, eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders, so the juniors and seniors who won’t be affected by it aren’t voting,” said Scott Sugg, associate principal at Andover. “I don’t think they’re so attached to what we have now. They know the changes that will take place.”

Sugg said the fourth-place options that didn’t make the cut were both “quite a ways back” in vote total: the Titans mascot, and a red and gold color combination.

“At least two of those three mascots were the top two when we did the initial voting, and same with the colors,” Sugg said, noting that the Chargers, Royals, black and blue, and blue and yellow options have been popular from the start. “We’re getting pretty good participation. We have about 900 kids participating,” out of roughly 2,500.

All three potential mascots continue the district trend of tying into medieval times as the Andover Barons and Lahser Knights have for decades. The Royals’ medieval tie-in is fairly obvious in referring to a royal family. The Chargers refers to a jouster’s horse, and the Blackhawks refers to a hawk used in falconry, which was a popular hunting method in medieval times. All three are also names of professional sports franchises, in Kansas City, San Diego and Chicago.

“The Barons and the Knights were not an option,” said Ed Bretzlaff, BHS assistant superintendent for instruction. “We told the students the current mascots and color combinations were off limits.

“We’ve gotten some reports from parents that their kids are pretty geeked about it, pretty excited.”

Once the votes are tallied Jan. 31, Sugg said, the district will make sure the selection “resonates across all five schools” in order to make sure it wasn’t just one school contributing the bulk of the votes for a specific option.

“The faculty and administration involved will take those numbers and make sure they make sense,” Sugg said.

He said the decision should be set late Tuesday and be brought before the Board of Education Feb. 2 for approval.

“We’re going to make an effort to combine some teams next year,” Sugg said of most freshmen and some junior varsity squads, depending on participating numbers. “They’ll be wearing a new color.”

Varsity squads will not combine or change team names and colors until fall 2013, when the current sophomores are seniors, and the other three grades voting on the mascot and colors this week will also be at the unified high school.

Once approved, the next step will be to determine the best shades or tones of each color — for example, royal blue with black instead of navy blue with black — and design a logo for the new mascot. Both Sugg and Bretzlaff said the logo aspect of the project is also likely to be very student-driven, and it could potentially be designed by students.

“Our plan is to move forward with that part of it,” Bretzlaff said. “It’ll give our middle school and high school kids something to rally around as they anticipate this consolidation. That was the plan from the beginning, to have the kids involved from the start.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Chris Jackett at cjackett@candgnews.com or at (586)279-1110.