Morris "Football Team"?

Read that that Morris school board voted to change the mascot from Redskins to something else to be determined at a later date. Wondering how much push back there is/was from some of the locals who DIDN'T want the name to change?

https://abc7chicago.com/morris-high-school-mascot-redskins-sports/11453627/

15 years ago or so the Chatham-Glenwood High School Redskins became the Titans.

There were some bitter feelings out in Chatham for a few years but that all seems to have gone away over time. The Redskins were better at football than the Titans are. Go figure.

Teetime wrote:15 years ago or so the Chatham-Glenwood High School Redskins became the Titans.

There were some bitter feelings out in Chatham for a few years but that all seems to have gone away over time. The Redskins were better at football than the Titans are. Go figure.

Yes I think the Redskins were better. The name Titans wasn’t very original. I think they got that from the movie “Remember the Titans” which was about a high school football team.

OSUBucks wrote:

Teetime wrote:15 years ago or so the Chatham-Glenwood High School Redskins became the Titans.

There were some bitter feelings out in Chatham for a few years but that all seems to have gone away over time. The Redskins were better at football than the Titans are. Go figure.

Yes I think the Redskins were better. The name Titans wasn’t very original. I think they got that from the movie “Remember the Titans” which was about a high school football team.

My high school's (Pekin HS) nickname was a ethnic slur. They proudly used it from the 1920's until 1975. At home basketball games, male and female mascots (there were tryouts to be the mascot), dressed in Chinese dress, after a gong was banged, would escort the opposing team's head cheerleader to mid court, then the National Anthem was played. It was a very solemn ceremony.. I graduated in 1973 and when they changed it in "75, people in town were made about it for years. There was even a store that sold merchandise emphasizing the banned nickname.
When I reported for football my freshman year at IWU, all freshmen were "required" to sing their school song. After I was done, I was asked about my school's nickname and was given a heavy dose of s@%t.
The nickname was the Red and White from 1975 until they settled on Dragons in 1981
When they got a new scoreboard for the football stadium, There was a dragon (the new nickname and mascot), on top of the
of the old scoreboard. It had been there since 1948 (year stadium was built). People demanded that the dragon stayed. It is still there.
When I talk to friends I was teammates with, we shake our heads and laugh about how we were proud, the town was proud, and we would fight if someone made fun of the nickname. It was the worst name for a sports team in the history of sports name.

Pike Bishop wrote:

OSUBucks wrote:

Teetime wrote:15 years ago or so the Chatham-Glenwood High School Redskins became the Titans.

There were some bitter feelings out in Chatham for a few years but that all seems to have gone away over time. The Redskins were better at football than the Titans are. Go figure.

Yes I think the Redskins were better. The name Titans wasn’t very original. I think they got that from the movie “Remember the Titans” which was about a high school football team.

My high school's (Pekin HS) nickname was a ethnic slur. They proudly used it from the 1920's until 1975. At home basketball games,  male and female mascots (there were tryouts to be the mascot), dressed in Chinese dress, after a gong was banged, would escort the opposing team's head cheerleader to mid court, then the National Anthem was played. It was a very solemn ceremony.. I graduated in 1973 and when they changed it in "75, people in town were made about it for years. There was  even a store that sold merchandise emphasizing the banned nickname.
When I reported for football my freshman year at IWU, all freshmen were "required" to sing their school song. After I was done, I was asked about my school's nickname and was given a heavy dose of s@%t.
The nickname was the Red and White from 1975 until they settled on Dragons in 1981
When they got a new scoreboard for the football stadium, There was a dragon (the new nickname and mascot), on top of the
of the old scoreboard. It had been there since 1948 (year stadium was built). People demanded that the dragon stayed. It is still there.
When I talk to friends I was teammates with, we shake our heads and laugh about how we were proud, the town was proud, and we would fight if someone made fun of the nickname. It was the worst name for a sports team in the history of sports name.

Good post, Pike.

Just like your comrades in the Wild Bunch learned, progress is painful.

Talking about ethnic slurs as mascots. My dad graduated from Forrest-Strawn-Wing in 1968 ( part of Prairie Central today) and they were known as the Eskimos.

dusty7 wrote:Talking about ethnic slurs as mascots.  My dad graduated from Forrest-Strawn-Wing in 1968 ( part of Prairie Central today) and they were known as the Eskimos.  

I'm from Naperville. At North, we were the Huskies but Central was the Redskins. Around that time period (late 80s-early 90s), Naperville specifically and the Southwest Suburbs in general were getting more diverse and the Central mascot did not seem appropriate any longer. There was some pushback from old-timers but not enough to stop the mascot from being changed to the Redhawks.

Definitely was the right thing to do.

Good story Pike. I remember many years ago Pekin basketball was on TV and they won state. I was just a kid then but they were still using the racial slur. The team they beat had a nickname that was hard to forget. They were the Cobden Appleknockers and they were a very small enrollment school.

OSUBucks wrote:Good story Pike. I remember many years ago Pekin basketball was on TV and they won state. I was just a kid then but they were still using the racial slur. The team they beat had a nickname that was hard to forget. They were the Cobden Appleknockers and they were a very small enrollment school.

I was in 3rd grade win they beat the Appleknockers in 1963. The game is on Youtube. I knew the nickname had something to do with China but I didn't know it was a slur until I got to college. I was very naive. I think when I was a senior in high School, the PJ-Star refused to use the mascot name in headlines or sports articles. An old teammate still has his football T shirt and I have a T shirt with the slur/nickname on it. The shirts are buried deep in a storage bin.
I do not get back there often (usually athletic related), but the the town has progressed somewhat into the 21st century and put some bad habits behind them.

#soft

J/k

We've been dealing with the pressure to change since the early 2000's, and yes, there's a strong backlash from the community on this right now on many of the social media outlets.

Horsefeather wrote:We've been dealing with the pressure to change since the early 2000's, and yes, there's a strong backlash from the community on this right now on many of the social media outlets.

I have no doubt about the backlash and I am sure it will get really intense here in the next few week. But I am sure in time that it will pass.

One way to possibly appease the community would be to involve them in the decision on what the new mascot will be.

dusty7 wrote:

Horsefeather wrote:We've been dealing with the pressure to change since the early 2000's, and yes, there's a strong backlash from the community on this right now on many of the social media outlets.

I have no doubt about the backlash and I am sure it will get really intense here in the next few week.  But I am sure in time that it will pass.

One way to possibly appease the community would be to involve them in the decision on what the new mascot will be.  

Being an alumni that moved away when I graduated college over fifteen years ago, it is quite embarrassing to read the narrow minded remarks by people on social media, most specifically Facebook. To quote George Carlin, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

niewi 24 wrote:Being an alumni that moved away when I graduated college over fifteen years ago, it is quite embarrassing to read the narrow minded remarks by people on social media, most specifically Facebook. To quote George Carlin, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

It's no wonder Dan Bernstein cringes every time he sees an 815 area code pop up on a caller.