For the past two seasons, Uni High athletic teams have been sporting brand-new uniforms in their competitions. This substantial change, which sparked financial questions and has highly impacted Uni High teams, is primarily due to Uni’s efforts to strengthen its connection to the University of Illinois.
Athletic director Kyle Hummel explained Uni’s new colors and threads.
“We’re just following their color guidelines, and whatever they are is what we’re doing,” Hummel said. The University of Illinois uses “Illini Blue” and “Illini Orange” for all of its sports teams, and these are the colors Uni is rebranding its teams with.
With such a change affecting all teams at Uni, the question about funding grew popular. “A lot of the money comes from the athletic fees,” says Hummel. For the past few years, it has been standard Uni procedure for students to pay a $200 athletic fee per sport, which is how Uni is able to pay for all sports to obtain new uniforms.
With so many different uniform types and styles, it might be hard to pick and choose for all teams at Uni. Hummel explained how he went about procuring as well as deciding on designs for each team.
“I contact different companies, [asking] ‘OK, what are your uniforms that you have? And then they’ll send me catalogs, and they’ll have on there ‘hey, here’s twenty different options,'” says Hummel.
Hummel prefers BSN Sports. Websites like this will have pre-made uniform choices ready for production. “And I’ll bring those to the coaches,” Hummel stated. He checks with each team’s coach(es) to ensure they like the uniforms. The final step before purchase is making sure they fall within the Illinois High School Association’s (IHSA) guidelines for acceptable uniforms.
Hummel said that when he picked out the designs for the uniforms, he focused on making each sport unique while still following official IHSA guidelines for color schemes and number and logo placement.
“I didn’t want the boys and the girls to look the exact same,” Hummel stated. I wanted them to all look good, just in their own unique way.”
Hummel mentioned that he was a big fan of the new uniforms and seemed happy with how they all turned out. Of course, even great success can come with minor setbacks, and Hummel was no stranger to those when obtaining new uniforms.
“Some sports were no problem, whereas some just were,” said Hummel. “It’s just a matter of the kind of brand, and sometimes we can get shorts in but not the uniform tops. It’s just a matter of the particular product.”
With so many new uniforms coming in, we are left to wonder: what happened to the old ones? For years, Uni sported the royal blue and bright orange colors that became synonymous with “Uni High.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s so interesting is that in the past, we had a lighter blue, a bright orange, which kind of made Uni unique. It was separate from the University.” Hummel pointed out.
The old uniforms are now stored in the lower level of Kenney Gym. It is unclear what the future plans are for the old uniforms, but those colors will forever remain engrained in the memories of Uni alums and past opponents.
