MARYSVILLE If the Pilchuck Chargers are to ever ride again, they will have to convince Marysville students to come along for the ride. If they do ride again, they may take their green-and-gold colors into the sunset with them.
As a committee works to recommend names for several new and current Marysville schools, the question of the mascot and colors for a new high school on Getchell Hill will be kicked over to the students who will likely attend the $79 million building when it opens five years from now.
The green-and-gold Chargers were the mascot for Pilchuck High School, which was merged with Marysville High School in 1976. The combined campus took on the red-and-white colors and the Tomahawk mascot of Marysville High School during the merger, and promises were made to alumni and students that the Chargers would be revived again someday. That is important to some members of the 25-member committee considering the matter, but a consensus emerged last week that todays students should be consulted. Three committee members are students from Marysville-Pilchuck High School, Marysville Junior High School and Cedarcrest Middle School, and they were given the option to consult their peers before the committee sends three options to the Marysville School Board for consideration at their Nov. 27 meeting.
My opinion on that is that they should leave that to the kids, said Ken Cage, President of the Marysville Historical Society and a naming committee member. I think that it ought to be the students themselves who should have a large input on the colors and the mascots.
He was aware of the promises made 30 years ago, but said time has trumped those concerns.
That Im not so sure is a good idea. I think it requires some more thought. I think that they should just bury the Chargers and start afresh, Cage said. Lysander Getchell was a surveyor who platted much of the area and Cage suggested that trade could tender a new mascot. Weve got a brand new high school, lets start with a new name and mascot.
Four or five combinations of colors and mascots are being considered, according to Jodi Runyon, assistant to the board and an M-P alum.
We decided that students should have some input, Runyon said. Some people did express that they felt we should give back some green and gold and give back the Pilchuck Chargers. I have a feeling that will be one of the recommendations.
The cost of making changes was considered; keeping the current M-P motif will save more than $500,000 in uniforms and other costs, and the committee earlier recommended a consistent naming scheme for all high schools to have Marysville as the first part of a hyphenated moniker. The top recommendation for the new school is Marysville-Getchell High School, and committee members discussed keeping another common feature for the high school colors, with red as a common denominator to be joined to other shades. Currently all the secondary schools have red helmets and that could spread to other facets, according to Runyon, who said one of the student advisors thought all the schools could be tied together so.
As the school district will shift all students to a 6-7-8-grade scheme in middle schools next year, Marysville Junior High School will have to be renamed to avoid conflicting with the current Marysville Middle School several blocks away. Members considered several different options and are leaning toward Totem Middle School, Lincoln Middle School and Totem-Cho Hutch in that order. The latter is a Lushootseed word for unity. Lushootseed is the language of the Tulalip Tribes, who have more than 1,000 students enrolled in the district, or about 10 percent of the 11,000-strong student body. Totem reflects a new story pole carved by Tulalip master carver Kelly Moses and students over the last school year, and was a big hit with the committee at their Nov. 7 meeting. Lincoln was the name of a former school on the State Avenue site, but researchers were not able to find out if that facility was named after former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln or some other historical figure.
A lot of people made some assumptions that it was named after president Lincoln, said Runyon.
The committee considered renaming the downtown junior high after nearby Asbery Field, which was donated to the school district in 1939 with the stipulation that it keep the name of the hardware store founder who donated the plot of land to the south of the junior high. For the sake of simplicity the committee considered naming the whole complex in honor of either Isaac or S.T. Sant Asbery. Isaac was the elder and S.T. Asbery was the son whose widow donated the land to the district in 1939.
Marysville Middle School principal Pete Lundberg said after 20 years at his school he thought he knew the mind of eighth-graders well enough to foresee a corruption of Asbery by students or adversaries. The committee took him at his word and Asbery bit the dust. A motion was made by former vice principal Clyde Nordgren to name the school after Monty Parratt, a former junior high P.E. teacher. The committee said it might be possible to honor Parratt by renaming the gymnasium after him instead.
The committee is also charged with finding a new name for Marysville Alternative High School, which wants to lose the A-word in its title. That issue was remanded to that schools students and staff for recommendations that will have to be approved by the school board.
The committee will have at least one more meeting, according to Runyon.