INDIANA -- Indiana high school colors have originated in a wide, wide variety of different ways. It's difficult to imagine Ben Davis without the purple or Anderson Indians garbed in anything other than red and green. However, the origins and changes of team colors come in a spectrum of varieties...

Team colors are something most high school fans simply take for granted. Everyone in the state old enough to remember past hardwood greats generally pictures them in dated uniforms sporting those well known colors. New Castle green, Jeffersonville red, and LaPorte's orange are as much a part of our Hoosier landscape as cut corn.

Still not much thought is given to where these all started. Speaking to a number of AD's, I was able to track down an interesting array or reasons for adopting one color or another. Many simply had no idea or recollection. But, quite a few stated it simply had to do with what was on hand at the time. Keeping in mind that in the earliest of days of some of our older high schools, uniforms were all home made and the idea of ordering uniforms from a catalog while possible even then, was not an option for most financially strapped school districts.

Team colors often were dictated by an abundance of one color of material in a town. One great story I heard was one told by an elder citizen of Princeton. She retold a story handed down to her that the reason the Princeton Tigers wore red was because the ladies of the community had a bumper crop of beats at the time. They used those to die the white fabric. So the cheer "Beat'em Princeton!" has more meaning that what we thought.

Color changes were often made out of necessity as well. The story out of old Newburgh High School (now part of Castle) is that a traveling team uniform salesmen had just one set to sell, and not a complete one at that. That set was dark blue. The school purchased those, and had some ladies of the town sew some similar uniforms to match those as best they could. Years later gold or yellow numerals were added to round out the colors, but the blue allegedly had it's origins from that first uniform sale.

The Muncie Star-Press recently had a story regarding Yorktown's switch from black and gold to the green and white we are familiar with today. According to that story, the switch was made in the 1940's simply because many other surrounding schools already used the colors of black and gold. The story also recounted that there were those that "had never heard of a green Tiger." So no doubt there was some resistance among old timers used to supporting the black and gold.

Resistance among old timers? Never.

But the article pointed out: "The girls wanted to change it. And when they get together like that, they carry a lot of weight."

That's answers it all really doesn't it.

Recent changes often come in the form of simple additions to the classic team colors. Whiteland is a great example of this. Blue and white are the colors listed in all literature about the school, but any central Indiana opponent will tell you that blue and orange are their true colors now, and most would also admit that it's a change for the better as their uni's have a sharp look to them. Even though this has been a relatively new change (last 15 years) no one I spoke to could track down where it was started.

Another Johnson County school, Franklin, has unofficially added black to its old school blue and white colors. Not just as an accent color as many schools have done, but as a primary color for jerseys and warm-ups alike. Again, no one knew how that change was started either.

My own local high school of Greenwood has gone through several transitions. Gwood originally wore navy and gold for many, many years, but when a new high school was built and the move was made from what is now the middle school, the students voted to change to green and gold. That took place in the 1970's. For many years after that switch, Greenwood teams shared the same colors as the Green Bay Packers. However, beginning around the year 2000, for aesthetic reasons only, the yellow was gradually replaced with Vegas gold. Just this past spring current board members insisted on a return to the yellow for all new uniforms. We shall see what colors run out of the tunnel this coming year.

So many schools have gone through similar changes or additions. Here's a LINK to our list of closed schools and the colors they wore prior to consolidation. No doubt there was a great deal of negotiating regarding mascots and colors when new schools were formed out of old ones.