Many thanks to Pat Peeters for starting this event and keeping it going for 25 years. He was going to wrap it up after this year, but another intrepid Squire has offered to keep it going beyond this year!
Abbot Pennings High School
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Monday, March 22, 2021
2017 Tour of the Pennings Building & Grounds
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Mysteries Solved - Black Helmets and Yellow Pants
"The quarterback at the time was having trouble seeing the silver helmets amongst competitors white and light colored helmets. So Coach LaViolette had them all painted black so his quarterback could more easily see his teammates.
"They ordered a few new black helmets yearly but spray painted the old helmets black every summer for several years until they had turned them all over."
Dave did not know where we got the Fighting Squire Logo. I had always assumed a student created it modeled on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish logo, but I've seen our exact Squire at a few other schools named Knights, Crusaders, etc. So it may have been an image in the public domain or perhaps just freely shared back then. I did see a post from another school where they credited one of their students with designing it, but the timing didn't seem right. (Here is the difficult to see silver helmet.)
On to the pants. To me, the Squire color palette has always been a really cool green, black and white. But we wore yellow football pants during my time there in the 80s, and for sure back to 1979 as shown in this photo from the 1979 Springs game. Michele said that Dave confirmed my suspicions that it had something to do with the connection to St. Norbert College. He thinks we got hand-me-down pants from SNC when they ordered new ones. And there may have been a connection to the Packers as well. All of those teams were wearing yellow pants with green and white stripes on the side for a time.
Here's a photo of the 1972 Squires vs the Cadets. White pants with black stripes then. I wonder if we ever had black pants with a green jersey and black helmet. That would have been sharp!
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
The APHS Gymnasium
The Abbey Bar and Hitchhiking Home
Monday, March 8, 2021
Murder Ball
Gym class at Abbot Pennings High School involved a variety of sports. Mr. Minten would usually take us through several classes worth of each activity, baseball, basketball, touch football and various other pursuits. However, in between sessions, or on special occasions (or perhaps when Mr. Minten didn't feel like trying to get us organized) he would declare that this day would be "Murder Ball!" Murder Ball is more or less the same as Dodgeball, but at Abbot Pennings, the venue and the projectiles made it unique.
The Pennings Gym was small, but it contained an abbreviated basketball court. The top of the key nearly touched the center circle. The baselines were touching the brick wall, and there were pillars along the side. This picture from a 1982 pickup basketball game gives a nice overview and reminds us how short athletic shorts used to be.
The very features that limited its use for basketball only added to it's charm for Murder Ball. The centerline divided the court in half. One for each team, and you could not cross into the opponents territory. Out of bounds was where you went when you were hit, so you could not hide behind a pillar if you were in play. The brick walls provided some ricochet, so if you avoided the mat, even a miss might bounce back to your team for another try.
But the true genius of Mr. Minten's version of Murder Ball was the balls that he provided for this game. The number was 3, but each one was unique, and it was critical to know where they were at all times throughout the game. First, we have your standard red bouncy ball, standard for "4 Square" and other schoolyard games. It was soft and bouncy, difficult to throw, but easy to catch. It was not very accurate, and didn't hurt at all if it hit you. Then we had the fuzzy volleyball, standard size, but covered with yellow fuzz like a tennis ball. It was a little more challenging than the bouncy ball, but nothing to fear.
The final ball, the coup de grace, was the tiny white volleyball. It was so small, so cute, one could hardly imagine the destruction it could render in the hands of a Pennings athlete. It was about the size of a softball, almost as hard, but lighter. It had the seams of a volleyball, but it was slick and very hard to catch. The best bet was to dodge it and hope it ended up on your side of the court, but it would often bounce back off the bricks into the hands of the enemy. A cruel, but favorite, tactic was to acquire the bouncy ball and the little volleyball on your side. One team member would throw an easy shot with the bouncy ball. As the unsuspecting opponent was lining up for an easy catch, he would be drilled with the white volleyball.
Strategy, tactics, agility and pain: All were found in a spirited game of Murder Ball at Abbot Pennings.
This story was original written for the old website in February 2009.
Sunday, March 7, 2021
The Abbey Pond
The Abbot Pennings Squires played our football games across the river, at St. Norbert College's Minahan Stadium - Home of the St. Norbert Green Knights. (A Squire is a Knight's assistant, which is how we got our name.) The stadium was just off of Broadway, on the grounds of the St. Norbert Abbey. Conveniently (or inconveniently if you were a freshman) located next to the stadium was a small body of water known as Abbey Pond.
In this 2009 view, the shores of Abbey Pond appear to be well groomed. There's even a nice path down to the water. Not so in 1981, when I was a freshman. Back then it was surrounded by weeds and trees, and the pond itself was slimy and murky from rotting plants and leaves that had fallen in. I don't remember an island either, but it may have been there.
It became somewhat of a tradition over the years for upperclassmen to round up freshman after football games and toss them into the pond. By the 1980s, the administration was attempting to crack down on this behavior, and I can kind of see their point. After all, this happened in the dark after football games, and no swimming credentials were verified before one was tossed in. The prudent freshman was careful not to mouth off to seniors in the week before a home game, and many frosh would leave a couple of minutes early to avoid the swim.
Minahan Stadium was torn down after they built Donald J. Schneider Stadium on the west side of the river, closer to campus, in 2010. Here's a view of the pond in the mid-2010s when you could still see the footprint of the stadium. More algae on it in this one which is more what I remember not wanting to get tossed into!