The Varsity Jacket Thread

[Gothamite]

Wauwatosa East High School, Wauwatosa Wisconsin.

This one's not mine, but it's almost identical (year's a little off).

[Perfect Zero]

I can beat you all. I got my letter in Choir for making 9th grade All-Region. Later on we went on to UIL perfection, but the only patch I ever put on there was my region patch. What was really cool was that if you made varsity choir (minimum being a Junior), you got the option for the jacket. However, if you made any region choir you got it early, so I got mine as a freshman.

[omnivore]

At my HS, you would letter if you played in half the games. It was the same in college when I played and coached and the same at the HS I coached at, too. Though there were some exceptions for certain kids situations.

[Sport]

Nice thread, but not for the reasons you might have guessed. We set up varsity jackets where I work and it's interesting to see all the different ways of displaying the information. Keep 'em coming, anyone have any wild set-ups? Name by the pocket was pretty wild for me.

You guys don't do the name by the pocket thing? That's pretty common here. In high school my friend bought a doctorate in pop culture online and had them stitch "Dr. Jason Thomas" above the pocket.

[Joshawaggie]

I lettered in Basketball and Band. Didn't get a jacket though. My school wasn't big into letterman jackets. My class was about 100 and maybe 2 had jackets that I can remember. My letters are in a box somewhere.

[tajmccall]

I lettered in academics and newspaper. Yep. Newspaper. Quit football Junior year because of ankle injuries so never lettered varsity style.

Also, aesthetically, some of these letter jackets are extremely gaudy, no offense. I expect a tiny logo on the sleeve for the letter, not a giant description across the back.

I never liked logos on the back either. Just either the name of the person or the school chain-stitched.

[shaydre1019]

How does one letter in a sport?

It's based on playing time. I'd imagine the requirements vary by school and sport. I honestly don't know if there is a uniform system for getting a letter.

It goes from school district to school district, from sport to sport even. In my school district, to get a letter jacket in the arts (music, theatre, speech & debate), you had to participate a min of 3 years and you could only get the jacket your senior year. My bro ended up going to the adjacent district and got his jacket after his freshman year for being in band.

For individual sports (swimming, track & field), we had to accumulate a certain number of points based on personal achievements. My wife lettered in swimming as a freshman but didn't get a jacket until her sophomore year (freshman can letter but not get jackets in my old district). For team sports, it was based on either playing on varsity or being a team member for the vast majority of the time, or coach's discretion. On baseball, we had a couple of guys who got called up from JV mid-way through the year and lettered even though they only pitched in a few games.

And all of this was totally different from my dad, who grew up in a small town in South Texas. Letters were only for sports.

Bouj, where's your dad from??

[O.C.D]

Cool thread.

Here's my jacket from Laguna Hills High School, Class of 2008. I was a 3-year letterman in football, and I was a 4-year starter on the varsity lacrosse team, but the team was a club team for the first two years, and became a school sport for my junior and senior seasons. I was also 3 days from lettering in wrestling, but I had to leave, I just couldn't stand the coach and the whole attitude of the program.

Anyways, an interesting thing on the jacket, my freshman and sophomore years at school, we primarily used the brown and athletic gold. Then my junior year we jumped on the vegas gold bandwagon. That bled over into the jackets, first with the patches, then into the overall design. With the tan leather sleeves, the vegas gold looked more tanish/beigeish than it did gold. It looked washed out, whereas the athletic gold was bold and distinguishing. You can see the difference with the championship patches on the back, and some patches on the letter.

Front (Right chest has "Laguna Hills," my name, then "Football" and "Lacrosse." Left chest has the school crest, the "LH"):

Back (My last name and three patches. Left to right: Football 2006 Pacific Coast League Champions, Football 2005 Sea View League Champions, Lacrosse 2007 1st CIF season (first year as a school sport). I am missing one patch from my senior season, the 2007 Pacific Coast League Champions, because I just never got it put on. I got it in the December of my senior year, I was always wearing the jacket and just never got it into the shop and after I graduated, I never felt the need to add on to my high school stuff. I should get that put on there though.) :

Left Chest (School crest "LH," the letters is the crossed lacrosse sticks with a bar underneath for one of my varsity seasons, the football with a bar for a varsity season, and the pin is for the Hawk Excellence award for the Journalism department, basically student of the year in that department. I am also missing two things here, another varsity bar for football (ball = 1 year, bars = additional years) and another for lacrosse (each bar is each varsity year) but it's the same story as the league champion back patch. Both bars were from senior year and from the second half of that year. I just never got it done):

Left Arm (Football #70, position Offensive Line):

Right Arm (Grad year 2008, Lacrosse #1, position Goalie):

Too weird. I went to Trabuco Hills High School and we have the same graduating class. We played football against each other in high school. I was an OL so we never went head to head. I remember getting blasted on kick off return by somebody on your team when I had my back turned. The only time I ever got hit that hard. I always thought we had better uni's though.

[The_Admiral]

I lettered in band. When I got my letter, I stuffed it in a drawer with some old lunch cards and AC adapters, and never thought of it again until today.

[Bouj]

How does one letter in a sport?

It's based on playing time. I'd imagine the requirements vary by school and sport. I honestly don't know if there is a uniform system for getting a letter.

It goes from school district to school district, from sport to sport even. In my school district, to get a letter jacket in the arts (music, theatre, speech & debate), you had to participate a min of 3 years and you could only get the jacket your senior year. My bro ended up going to the adjacent district and got his jacket after his freshman year for being in band.

For individual sports (swimming, track & field), we had to accumulate a certain number of points based on personal achievements. My wife lettered in swimming as a freshman but didn't get a jacket until her sophomore year (freshman can letter but not get jackets in my old district). For team sports, it was based on either playing on varsity or being a team member for the vast majority of the time, or coach's discretion. On baseball, we had a couple of guys who got called up from JV mid-way through the year and lettered even though they only pitched in a few games.

And all of this was totally different from my dad, who grew up in a small town in South Texas. Letters were only for sports.

Bouj, where's your dad from??

Freer. 1960's. He got his jacket for track but had letters for basketball & football too. In small towns back then, people didn't concentrate on one thing. You went from football to basketball to baseball and/or track.

[Sport]

I lettered in band. When I got my letter, I stuffed it in a drawer with some old lunch cards and AC adapters, and never thought of it again until today.

How cool you think you are and the tone your post takes on is severely compromised by the admission that you were in band.

[The_Admiral]

I've never thought myself cool, and everyone's presence here trumps everyone's perceived coolness.

[Still MIGHTY]

Too weird. I went to Trabuco Hills High School and we have the same graduating class. We played football against each other in high school. I was an OL so we never went head to head. I remember getting blasted on kick off return by somebody on your team when I had my back turned. The only time I ever got hit that hard. I always thought we had better uni's though.

Wow, that's funny. Small world this internet is.

I always loved that Trabuco game. Fun rivalry, especially since some of our coaches went to Laguna and we've played Trabuco each season for the past 30 years or something like that. So they would talk us up all week. We always got up for that game, so I wouldn't doubt you got a nice hard hit on a kickoff. And knowing the guys we had on kickoff, I also wouldn't doubt you got blindsided . Always fun.

And if I remember right, your home unis were the same as our home unis just blue and silver. And I was never a fan of the recolored Broncos logo for your Mustangs. (Then again, I'm on the fence about our own Hawks brown/gold recolor of the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles black/gold logo). Neither were anything special, but they did their service to represent the school.

[winters in buffalo]

I'll have to dig mine out of the attic. I still have it, because I'm not entirely sure what to do with it.

[docrocket]

I lettered in band. When I got my letter, I stuffed it in a drawer with some old lunch cards and AC adapters, and never thought of it again until today.

How cool you think you are and the tone your post takes on is severely compromised by the admission that you were in band.

I lettered in H. S. band too (hence the bari sax in the profile pic)...but I really wish I had more AC adapters from that era...

Also have my letter in squash (the sport, not the vegetable) from Wilfrid Laurier University. Yes, Icecap, I know Western has won OUA Squash 27 freakin' years in a row!

I can see that I need to take a few pics and get in on this thread!

[Discrim]

I tell ya what, if your team gives out letters at some sort of postseason dinner, depending on what you know about the coach, you might wanna show up. Here, we get numerals, school initials, one patch and the letter (idk how the other schools handle multiple letterwinners, at Case we got a bar pin)...and apparently I lettered my junior year. I was unaware that I'd lettered until after my senior season, however, so that year I showed up to the postseason dinner and was among the letterwinners. To my surprise, instead of that big gold C, I'd been handed the bar, and since I was visting UW the next day, I had to wait til the following Monday to get the letter issue resolved. I never did get around to buying a jacket though, mainly cus I tended to fail at getting a job. Sucks, cus that jacket would've looked damn good on me

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[Raymie]

While the spam is bad, this is a good thread that SHOULD be revived.

The backs can be interesting (they're usually school name, large patch of mascot, school mascot). A lot of clip art too ? one sample I saw had the Rochester Mustangs logo on it (which is essentially stock work now). Another had (and I've since found they actually use this) the "Sunnyside devil" (in red and gray ? it's a quasi-common logo that was made by ASU for an Arizona high school*).

*Settlement of a lawsuit over the school's recolor of ASU's Sparky. The university found out when Sunnyside had to play a state title football game at Sun Devil Stadium.

[RedSox44]

LONGEST. SPAM. EVER.

Anyway, I think it's cool that we have a varsity jacket thread. I'm glad this was bumped. I'd like to contribute, but alas, I never played high school sports.

[BrandMooreArt]

yea to hell with the spam, this thread had potentiel. bring it back!

no pics of our jackets, but they look a lot like the OP's. school colors are red and white, some sports used black. even had the same letter R (richmond). but our jackets had/have grey sleeves. i always hated that. then the band geeks wanted jackets and they got black sleeves and i was like WTF?

edit - actually i found a couple of various pics Google'n:

looks like band geeks have changed it up since 03