Youth Sports Leagues (adventures in colors names and logos)

[B-Rich]

Most of you know I'm one of the older members of the Board, and am also a dad. Thankfully, my daughters are not only interested in sports (my wife has ZERO interest) but have also grown to share my interest in sports logos, team names, and colors. When they began playing organized youth sports, I got roped into being a volunteer coach. I'll admit, it is something I have enjoyed doing over the last decade or so.

In our neck of the woods, as I imagine it is in most places, youth organized sports are focused at the local neighborhood "playground" level. Kids begin play with "intramural" leagues within the playground itself, and as they get older they get into a team representing the playgound that plays other playgrounds. Each playground has its own mascot and color scheme (Pontiff Blue Devils, Lakeshore Indians, Girard Vikings), and older kids represent their neighborhood via their playground, wearing their colors.

But the more interesting thing to me is the younger, intramural leagues where I've mostly coached. It's interesting how the playground staff names teams and selecting colors for each league. It usually has some rhyme or reason. Anybody remember the famous scene in "The Bad News Bears" when Buttermaker finds out he has to get jerseys and jersey sponsors: "You'd better hurry; all the good colors are taken: red and white, blue and white, green and white, ..." Now, as I have daughters, my coaching has been limited to basketball and soccer. But I also have 2 nephews at the same playground, and without fail, the boys pee-wee football teams ALL have the same namesakes-- NFL teams. 6 year olds, 8 year olds, 10 year olds, doesn't matter. 4 to 6 teams per age group league, all with NFL names, in NFL colors, and usually with an NFL team logo slapped on a helmet. Of course, most helmets are white, and there is some leeway in colors and they do not match the exact team jersey style, so you come out with something like this worn by my godson:

Now, in other intramural sports, there are variations in how the playground admininstrators name the teams. My first year of coaching all girls soccer, the teams were named for the old WUSA - Courage, Power, Spirit, and the team I coached, the Freedom. In girls basketball, the teams were all WNBA: Comets, Sparks, Liberty, etc. Later teams I saw in boys basketball included NBA nicknames and college nicknames, and ACC names were used for my younger daughter's age group-- though not the nicknames; the actual college name. She played for "North Carolina"; another team was "Wake Forest", another was "Virginia", etc. For the most part, the playground staff are knowledgeable enough guys about sports logos and such to even get the colors right (or close). There has to be some variation as all the teams wear the same template: a t-shirt with the sport, playground name, and year on front, and a number and the team name on back. You can't have a black-t-shirted Wake Forest in the same league as a navy-T-shirted Virginia team, for instance.

Where I've coached the most has been soccer, which has probably the greatest participation and greatest variation in colors and naming. The second year coaching, our 4 team age group had its names based on the 4 major local colleges in our state: Tigers, Green Wave, Cajuns and Privateers (yellow, green, red and blue jerseys respectively). I noticed a younger division had been named with old NASL names, but carried it further: in addition to having the Earthquakes, Tornado, Blizzard, and Hurricanes, they added the Volcanoes and Tidal Waves, essentially becoming the "natural disaster league". Pretty clever on the part of the playground staff.

Being the logo/color geek that I am, I always looked forward to seeing what our team name and colors would be. But four years ago, I was disappointed. It turned out that the teams were based on MLS teams: United, Galaxy, Fire, and we got "Mutiny" which by then had been defunct for several years. Worse, we got orange jerseys, which was way off from the old Tampa Bay color scheme. It bothered me the whole season. The following year, I had gotten to know the playground staffer in charge of soccer well enough to mention to him that if they were going to do MLS names again, that the Mutiny was defunct and if they were to do an orange team, it should be the Dynamo. To which he said,

"Shoot, you can have whatever name or colors you want on the t-shirt, coach."

That put me like a kid in a toy store at Christmas. I decided that since they were going the MLS route, we got lime green shirts with blue lettering and became the Sounders. That looked nice, and the kids seemed to appreciate the unusual non-boring colors. The following year, we were completely open with nicknames, and the other coaches also picked their names and colors. I let my daughter and nephew in on the process, and they went for a purple jersey with Hornet-like "Creole Blue" lettering, and the name Stingrays. Not bad:

This year we got really crazy. My daughter, her best friend, and my nephew decided that they wanted safety/neon yellow t-shirts, and aqua lettering. For a name, they discussed "Insanity" and "Scorpions", but decided on "Tsunami". When the playground soccer administrator got together with me and the other three coaches for the player "draft", he asked me, "so what's the colors and name going to be this year coach?" After I told him we wanted neon yellow, the other coaches bought in, so we've had the "crazy color" league: the Galaxy (electric blue with yellow lettering), Gunners (safety orange with purple lettering), another coach had the repeat of the Sounders with lime green, and we had the neon yellow Tsunami:

The t-shirt maker uses a heat press for the numbers rather than a silkscreen like the rest of the shirt. As the numbers apparently don't come in aqua, he used black, which does add a nice tertiary color to our scheme.

Anyway, just wondereing if there are any other coaches out there on the board, or anyone else who has taken their logo/color interest into the real world via such youth sports leagues, or just share an observation from their own youth league uni/colors experience (which is probably closer for a lot of posters' age than coaching).

[RedBlueGold]

I didn't feel like reading all of that, but I like the white steelers helmet.