The Iowa highs of days gone by

Ex-coach compiles comprehensive chronology of colors, monikers, mascots of Iowa high schools through the years

Oct 19, 2023

AMES — There were the Manchester Manhawks. The Cedar Falls Teachers High Little Tutors. The Dubuque St. Columbkille Co-Dukes. The Mallard Ducks. The Monticello Minotaurs.
Also, there were the Volga City Volga Boatmen. The Newton Little Washers. The New Vienna St. Boniface Bonnies. The Protivin Rudolphinum Rudohawks. And last but not least, the Zwingle Zippers.
While some of these names just lilt off the tongue with alliteration, many are seldom spoken and rarely remembered except by a few alums of advanced age.
They’d be long-cooled embers on the ash heap of history were it not for Bud Legg, Iowa’s own Herodotus of high-school athletics

With a little help from his friends — Paul Juhl of Iowa City and Marion native Steve Roth — Legg, the retired information director for the Iowa High School Athletic Association, has compiled nearly 1,100 Iowa high schools past and present and their sometimes-multiple nicknames.
It’s been an avocation for decades for Legg, 80, of Ames, a 1965 graduate of Iowa State University. He was a career educator and coach at South Hamilton of Jewell and Ames high schools for a combined 35 years before capping his career with an 18-year run at the IHSAA in Boone, following the legendary Morris “Mo” Kelley.
”The mascot deal is quite the thing,” Legg said. “That was one thing I started with when I was teaching — actually, when I was at South Hamilton,” from 1966-76.
“I just carried it on whenever I could when I got to Ames High,” where he served from 1976-2001. He taught history, coached girls basketball, assisted with boys basketball and track and served for a time as activities director.
”And when I went to the association I had a good head start,” he said. “It was something I had followed when I was a kid, and got it together. It’s got every school in Iowa that I could ever find. It has colors, mascot, nickname and the current district that they’re in — everything I could find from 1905 to 1958.”

The Klemme Shamrocks, from Klemme in Hancock County in north-central Iowa, are now part of the Belmond-Klemme school district.

Compatriots Juhl and Roth “got intrigued with it,” and started adding schools from their areas.
His motivation, simply, was “the fact that it had never been done,” Legg said with a laugh. “I’m notorious for that. I just think that unless you capture some history of these schools, you miss it forever.
”You’ll see some schools in there you probably never heard of,” he said, “and some of them changed names. You’ll find Sacred Heart of Sioux City which became Bishop Heelan. There’s a bunch of Catholic schools in there, at least the ones I could find.
”One of the interesting things is there’s a school district in western Iowa, Glidden-Ralston. Pretty good athletic school. Glidden was separate, and Ralston, one year, their school board decided they couldn’t fund separate teams so they joined with Glidden. It was a co-op before they allowed co-ops.”

“What really got me going on this is when I went to Iowa State,” he said. “I met so many kids that were from some of those smaller schools” and they’d talk about their athletic accomplishments. “I started searching and I’d go to the library and look up 10 or 15 a night.”

He continued that beyond graduation into his teaching and coaching career.
Also, he said, “I have a collection of boys basketball programs and girls basketball programs, and that’s where I found a lot of those nicknames.”
Some schools had multiple nicknames.
For example, the high school in Newton, the longtime home of the Maytag Corp. washing machine and large appliance company, used the nickname “Little Washers” or “Li’l Washers” for its athletic teams.

Then in 1928, according to a school alumni timeline, Newton principal H.A. “Pop” Lynn suggested the name be changed to the Cardinals after attending a St. Louis Cardinals big-league baseball game with a group of students. The change was approved by faculty and students.

The Garrison Rockets, located in Garrison in Benton County in eastern Iowa, became part of the Vinton-Shellsburg school district.

Also, Legg said, teams of Wiota High School in western Iowa were first known as the “Little Giants” in the 1930s and ’40s. Then in the 1950s students wanted to be known as the “Blue Racers.” That lasted until 1958-59, when students wanted the teams to be known as the Panthers, and the administration allowed the students to do it, “to give them ownership” and pride in the school, the teams and their names.
”Just the novelty of it is pretty good,” he said of his venture, which he came by naturally, having studied history and worked at newspapers during his time at Iowa State.
His goal is to have the list available to the general public. But, he said, “A thousand schools doesn’t appeal to too many people,” to maintain and keep up on a website.
But it’s for posterity, “just making sure that the kids can say, ‘Grandpa went to Jewell, and they were known as the Panthers, even though it’s part of the South Hamilton Hawks now,’” he said.

Some probably viewed the venture as “and exercise in futility.” “Being a history major, I didn’t view it that way.
”When I did it, I did it out of love, I did it out of history,” he said.

The list can be downloaded and viewed below.

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This is the logo of the Cardinals of Waterloo Sacred Heart High School, which combined with St. Mary’s High School and Our Lady of Victory Academy in Waterloo to form Waterloo Columbus High School in 1959 (Pat Kinney photo).

Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state.

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