By Katelynn Luu
Over the last couple of years, the Huntington Beach Union High School District has been leading a push to unify the colors, logos and mascots used by the sports teams of the schools in the district.
For Fountain Valley High School (FVHS), this has led to the formalization of more specific colors. Rather than just red, blue and gold being the official colors of Fountain Valley High school, now it is a specific shade of red, blue, yellow, white and gray that sports teams are able to create uniforms with.
At the yearly coaches’ meeting at the end of last school year, FVHS Athletic Director Roger Holmes introduced the new identity branding to the head coaches with a Google Drive filled with the approved colors, fonts and mascot logos to use in team uniforms. Currently, these guidelines only apply to the athletics teams, although Holmes encourages other student organizations to also adhere to them and help unify the school’s identity branding.
“What we’re trying to encourage everyone to do, as they start to buy new [uniforms], is to follow these as closely as possible,” Holmes said. “Within a couple years, hopefully everything will be about the same.”
Previously, many of Fountain Valley’s sports teams had uniforms with different shades of blue and gold and utilized various logos and mascots. According to Holmes, the goal of introducing specific guidelines to the sports teams is to unify FVHS’s identity branding.
“About a year and a half ago, we really dug into our colors,” Holmes said “The baseball team, basketball team, track … Everyone has a little different shade … We wanted to get that together so when people see Fountain Valley colors, they know it’s Fountain Valley.”
The girls’ basketball team received new uniforms for the 2024-2025 school year, and the new co-head coach Izzy Om designed the uniforms following these guidelines. The previous uniform used the shade of blue that Marina High School uses, not the Baron shade of blue, and also featured a female Baron head.
According to Om, the Activities Office donated some money to help the team get new uniforms this year to match the correct shade of blue, and the new uniforms would set a new, fresh slate for the new coaching staff this year. The new uniforms include a black set and a white set with the correct shade of blue to represent FVHS. They also feature a different Baron head.
“The first thing we needed to make sure we did was use the correct shade of blue, the royal blue,” Om said. “But I really like the look of a black uniform … I wasn’t sure if that was allowed, because black isn’t one of our school colors. So I talked to Mr. Holmes, and he [approved].”
However, not all sports have lost their unique touch. For example, badminton utilizes a unique student-designed logo with a shuttlecock on it. Although it’s not one of the pre-approved mascot logos, the badminton team brought it to the Activities Office, which approved it.
“What we’re not trying to do is restrict people,” Holmes said. “What we should all want to do is stick with our colors, and then our logos and stuff like that.”
