The Friday night lights shine over the bright green astroturf field, marching band instruments glimmer in the light and pom poms shine. The student section and cheer squad screams along with the band “Can I get a what what?!”as the drumline plays cowbell. The drums roar and students rock back and forth to the beat. It’s a scene seemingly as old as Ames High itself, but something is different this year. We look fresh.

Four major activities have received new uniforms: band, basketball, cheer and choir. These new uniforms feature a fairly avant-garde style with angled lines and sharp color contrast. One thing almost any student of AHS will immediately notice is the addition of grey as a fairly central color in the new color scheme. “Grey has become an accent color and you are seeing a lot less white” Principal  Spence Evans said. “These uniforms have to last a long time, our school colors will always be black and orange but grey is a good addition as an accent color,” Mr. Evans said .

“We want to make sure our students feel appreciated,” Mr. Evans said when asked about the need for new uniforms. Similarly when Judge Johnston, the school’s athletic director, was asked about the need for new uniforms he said, “Other than just making sure we have enough uniforms for every player which is obviously one of our primary concerns, we want to make sure our athletes have uniforms that look good and that our students feel good in.”

Johnston also pointed out that when one uniform is ruined it usually cannot be repurchased as an individual uniform due to the policies of the uniform providers. This means that when enough uniforms are deemed unusable, another team set has to be purchased. Johnston did express some dissatisfaction with this policy, noting that it wasn’t always the most efficient or cost effective but at the end of the day the most important thing is that every player has a uniform that they can be proud to wear.  

Chris Ewan and Andrew Buttermore, the directors of the Ames High bands, gave a rundown of how the process of making a new uniforms begins. They said that it started about three years ago when the band grew so large that it had more performers than it did uniforms. A professional designer was consulted and he drafted multiple designs. After this, an email of the designs was sent to that year’s senior band members asking for their opinion. Taking the opinion of the band into consideration, a final decision was reached. After this final decision, fundraising for the process began in earnest through the efforts of the Ames Education foundation.

Choir was also in desperate need of updated uniforms seeing that the ones prior to the robes they have now were red. “Talk about not being a school color,” Evans joked. Charcoal grey was decided on as the new central color for the choir robes because according to. Evans, orange didn’t show up well in the light and black looked too much like graduation.

Regarding what happens to the old uniforms once they are cycled out, some are passed down to lower levels of a sport, but what happened to the 300 or so old marching band uniforms? They were donated to a school in need in Illinois according to Spence Evans .

Funding for the new sports uniforms came largely from the Ames High School building fund. This fund also helps buy instruments and equipment for choir and  band (like the new sousaphones and new jazz piano) but fundraising for the extremely expensive (150,000 dollars for band)  new uniforms came from the efforts of the Ames Education Foundation led by Annie  Arbuckle.

Two usable pictures (one from band for the music side of things and one from cheer from the athletic side of things.