The South Huntington School District celebrates its 100th anniversary during the 2024-2025 school year. The district was established on December 10, 1924 when the residents of South Huntington Common School District 12 and West Hills Common School District 13 voted to consolidate the two districts. It’s a proud milestone and we have a lot of special events and celebrations planned for the upcoming school year.
As part of this centennial celebration, we are excited to unveil a new look for our beloved Wildcat mascot! The Wildcat has roamed our halls, symbolizing strength, agility, and resilience. But over the decades, and through different school configurations, the Wildcat has taken on a different face in each one of our schools. And in our primary and intermediate schools separate, unrelated mascot identities emerged. But as we say - “Once a Wildcat, Always a Wildcat” - so as we mark this important milestone and passage of time, we want to unify our district under one dynamic symbol that students of all ages, alumni and faculty could identify with and showcase the pride we feel in ourselves and our school community.
After months of creativity, collaboration and feedback from all facets of our school community - students, teachers, alumni, administrators, PTAs, athletics, Booster Club, representatives from each school building, and board members - we’ve reimagined and updated our Wildcat mascot and logo. Superintendent Dr. Vito D’Elia and Board of Education President Nicholas Ciappetta introduce the new Wildcat in the accompanying video.
The new Wildcat mascot and logo design were created in collaboration with the Spirit of Huntington Art Center under the direction of the district’s rebranding committee. Several designs are offered but all with a unified format and specific colors and fonts. For the Wildcat, there is a three-quarter profile head; a front view Wildcat head, with shoulders and claws; plus a new font for the word Wildcats. We’ve kept our beloved paw print and redesigned our W.
The new Wildcats logo and mascot can be presented in the school colors of maroon and white, plus a tertiary gold highlight color. They can also be presented in black and white to give our different schools, sports teams, clubs and PTAs a variety of design options while still allowing for a degree of uniformity.
Based on feedback from the rebranding committee, we’ve also created a Junior Wildcat for our younger students. It can be used in the lower grades where a friendly mascot is preferred over our fiercer-looking athletics mascot.
The South Huntington Board of Education approved the new look at a board meeting on March 6th. Going forward, the new Wildcat mascot and logo will be used for all types of school and club apparel and merchandise, team uniforms, signage inside and outside of buildings including the newly constructed press box tower at the Walt Whitman High School athletic field. Eventually, they will even be seen on new gym floors and athletic fields. Some things will change sooner than later, but others will take time. “The turf field at Whitman will probably be the last thing because we have to wait until that needs to be replaced. But as we resurface a gym floor in Silas, for example, we'll do it right then. As we buy new uniforms, we'll have the logo. Some things are pretty simple like the football helmets or the lacrosse helmets. So it's a process and we're going to have a little mishmash of times with different W’s and different Wildcats, but eventually we'll get there,” said Board of Education President Nicholas Ciappetta.
For a look at more of the district's updated graphics, you can view the brand guide and artwork at the link here.