Bellefonte revamps athletic logos

Bellefonte athletics rebranded its department, and it’s coming with a new priority in logos that redefine the athletic department.

Its Native American symbol with a headdress was turned into a secondary logo.

It’s a way for the district to be respectful of individuals, said Athletic Director Deb Moore.

“We’re not phasing it out so much as we are being a little more cognizant of how it’s interpreted,” Moore said.

Moore said Bellefonte athletics will be defined by three emblems — a red block letter “B” as its main symbol, followed by a red “Indian head” with a headdress as its secondary logo, and a new secondary figure for the football team of a “B” with feathers attached to it that Moore called a “dreamcatcher.”

“So basically that’s what we have done and we want you to be aware of, because there are some people that are disappointed or voicing a little bit of disgruntle with us not approving (variations of) Indians to represent Bellefonte,” Moore said at a board meeting in July. “Basically, these three items will definitely be used. … It’s just going all vogue and doing something that’s not what we would consider politically correct, and now that the Washington Redskins have lost their trademark license we want to make sure we are still using our Red Raider name, but being respectful when we do so. Those are the three things we’ve come up with.”

The phasing out of nicknames and logos that stereotype races or heritages is a shift trending globally.

In addition to controversy with the Redskins, the University of North Dakota dropped its “fighting Sioux” name in 2012 and has yet to replace it with another nickname. When the Shawinigan Cataractes junior hockey team in Quebec created a marketing campaign that paired an image of a native warrior with a hockey player, members of First Nations in Canada expressed concern, according to a report from Yahoo Sports.

“We’re seeing this trend everywhere, but we don’t want to completely let it go,” Moore said. “We just want to be respectful when we use it.”

Moore said the idea to “promote unity within the athletic department” has been an ongoing idea between herself and Co-Athletic Director Jonathan Clark.

“Mr. Clark and I — since we’ve taken over as co-athletic directors — have gotten many requests for mascot things for sweatshirts, T-shirts, uniforms, so on and so forth. They’ve come in with different ideas of what the ‘B’ should be (and) what the Indian head should be,” Moore said. “It gets confusing for people to recognize, what is Bellefonte? Are we represented by an ‘R’ for Raiders? Are we represented by a ‘B’ for Bellefonte? … Basically what we’ve done is taken a stance with the coaches and booster clubs, and said that we are an athletic team. Yes we have different spokes to our wheel so to speak, but we all run our role in the same direction for our athletic programs, and we want to be recognized by making it into one team.”

When the school has “too many logos, it’s not recognizable,” Moore said.

“This is our way of branding the Bellefonte athletics product similar to the kind of ‘P’ used with the (Pittsburgh) Pirates and (Philadelphia) Phillies,” Moore said. “When you wear the ‘P,’ you know what fan you’re of. We want that with our ‘B’.”

School board members supported Moore’s information, however board member Rodney Musser said the change in colors to the dreamcatcher logo takes away from the history of Bellefonte athletics that were always red and white in color. The dreamcatcher adds black to the mix.

“I’m just saying that’s part of the confusion for the community,” Musser said regarding the colors.

The dreamcatcher came with the football team’s new era under coach Shanon Manning, who also created the design.

“That’s pretty much how we wanted to stay away from the Indian head as a logo, which is why the dreamcatcher came in,” Moore said. “I’m trying to narrow down the choices that they have in order to keep it as respectful as possible.”

The school’s main colors will remain red and white.

“There is no negotiation of uniforms — we will always be red and white,” Moore said.

Other colors like black or gray will be “accent colors,” Moore said.

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Bellefonte revamps athletic logos."