Mysteries Solved - Black Helmets and Yellow Pants

Since I started working on this collection in 2009, there were a couple questions that came up.  My friend Michele was kind enought to ask her dad, Dave Minten, our Athletic Director, Gym Teacher and Coach of many sports.  And he was able to share some answers.

As far as the helmet, I had gotten some photos from the 60s showing the Squires in a light, probably silver football helmet.  From the 1971 year book, I can see the 1970 season had the familiar black helmet with the Fighting Squire logo.  But the 1968 yearbook shows the '67 Squires in silver helmets.  So we have an approximate timeframe.  But why did we switch?

Michele told me that Dave remembers that,

"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!