Jackets Required Earning A High School Letter Becoming As Easy As A B C
This is how much times have changed for high school students:
A ballerina can earn a varsity letter, and band kids can buy letterman’s jackets.
“It used to be so hard for someone to letter, but now it’s kind of the opposite,” said Cheney senior Meghan Conrath, a four-year letter-winner in basketball and volleyball who will continue her basketball career for the Community Colleges of Spokane. “I think it’s a good thing because a lot of kids don’t participate in sports and don’t get credit in anything and they are able to get letter jackets. But being an athlete, I think of letter jackets as being for athletes.”
Megan Harris considers herself an athlete, and decided to try to convince the administration at Mead High School that she should earn a letter for ballet.
She’d been dancing since she was 3. She didn’t participate in any school-sponsored sports but she wanted a letterman’s jacket.
“But I didn’t do any sports so I was like `I guess I can’t have one,”’ said Harris, a ‘98 Mead graduate who’s now a sophomore studying psychology at the University of Washington. “But since I was a student there and with all the hours I spent with ballet, I thought that was equivalent to the hours spent in sports.”
Mead offers an alternative letter to students for non-school sports. A student seeking an alternative letter is held to the same eligibility requirements as those participating in school sports, and they must show that their practice schedule is comparable to that of an athlete in a school program, said activities coordinator Dick Cullen.
Harris had to write an essay about ballet, her experiences in the sport, and what it had taught her. Then she got her letter, and she bought her jacket.
“I wore the jacket a lot, I was proud of it,” she said. “It was basically my winter coat. People would ask me, `What do you do? I don’t see you in any sports.’ Some people would say `It doesn’t count, it’s just ballet,’ but I didn’t care. I spent every single day in a ballet class. People didn’t realize what went into it. They thought you didn’t have to work hard.
“After I had it, people recognized more what I was doing outside of school.”
Now, students with a variety of interests are recognized for their extra-curricular activities. Letterman jackets aren’t just for athletes anymore - they have become much more than just a sports status symbol.
At most schools, students can earn an academic letter for activities such as band, drama or debate. They can buy a jacket if they’re a team manager.
Coeur d’Alene High School senior Patti Stranger lettered four times in basketball and softball and both of the years she played soccer. She also lettered twice in band and earned an academic letter for good grades.
She didn’t buy a jacket, but she’s happy that her peers can buy them for all different activities.
At Coeur d’Alene, the athletic letter is a large C and the academic letter a little C.
“It’s not just a jock thing anymore,” Stranger said. “I think it’s cool just to be able to see all the different things that people are involved in. It’s neat to be able to see other people walking around, like people in band, in letterman’s jackets. It just brings people together a little more.”
While Coeur d’Alene and other schools such as Shadle Park and North Central have separate letters for athletics and academics, at some schools they are the same.
Including Ferris.
Senior Tyler Byers wishes there was more of a way to tell the athletes from the academics.
“I think it’s a good thing people can earn letters, but I’m one of the people who thinks they should have different letters for athletics as they do for music or whatever,” he said. “It’s really cool they can get recognized for what they do rather than having to look closely at their pin.”
Byers is a wheelchair athlete who has earned 10 letters - four for cross country, two for wrestling and four for track. He won the wheelchair 1,600, 400 and 100 at last weekend’s state track meet. Byers is headed to the University of Arizona, where he has an academic scholarship and plans to study engineering as well as compete in wheelchair racing.
Raeanna Jewell’s letter jacket should be well worn by the time she’s out of high school. She wears it almost everywhere, and wants to be recognized as an athlete wherever she goes.
The junior soccer, basketball and track athlete at Central Valley chose the same style jacket the boys wear - with a wool body and leather sleeves. Most girls go with that style these days.
Jewell can’t imagine being caught in one of those letterman’s jackets female high school athletes used to wear. Those prehistoric parkas with the wool sleeves and zip-up hood are just “too girlie” for her.
The girls-style jacket is nearly extinct.
Bill Boyle, owner of Olympic Sports in the Spokane Valley, hasn’t sold one in five years. It’s been almost two years for Barb Sweat, owner of Spokane Athletic.
“I have a bunch of old women’s jackets as samples for sizes,” Boyle said. “They’ll probably end up going to Goodwill. I had a mom in here the other day who wanted her daughter to have one. The daughter said she would rather not get a jacket if she had to get one with a hood.”
And most girls no longer wear an oversized jacket belonging to their boyfriend - they have their own.
Girls started wearing the boys-style jacket in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Boyle said.
“The girls really wanted to be recognized as jocks for their sport,” he said. “They started buying men’s jackets. It’s the trend.”
Letter jackets are the signature of sport if you’re a teenager. They’re how you can tell who’s from where at the movies or the mall.
And they’re not cheap.
You never know anymore what you’ll find dangling off a jacket, or what kind of elaborate patch will decorate the back.
Students dress up their letters with pins, patches, ribbons, and even guardian angels.
The more extravagant the patches for the back of the jackets, the more expensive the coat. There are patches of wrestlers and gymnasts, huge soccer balls and school mascots.
Jewell has three basketball patches on the back of her jacket and she estimates the coat weighs 15 pounds.
The price tag for Jewell’s jacket was $285. It was a birthday gift from her parents her freshman year.
Jewell’s coat was on the expensive end. The average cost for the standard jacket at Olympic Sports and Spokane Athletic is $200. That includes the first name on the front, graduating year, the letter and last name on the back. With a few fancy patches, an athlete could spend about $300.
Sweat sells more than 300 jackets a year at Spokane Athletic.
Yet it wasn’t that long ago that athletes wore letter sweaters. Some still do. They arrived in Washington in 1946, Boyle said.
Letter jackets became the new thing in the early ‘60s.
Boyle, 55, wore a letter sweater in his days as a star athlete at West Valley. He guesses he paid about $20 for his sweater at Olympic Sports.
Boyle graduated from West Valley in 1962, then played two years of football at the University of Washington before transferring to Eastern Washington University and earning a letter for baseball. That’s when he got a letter jacket.
“When I lettered in college, they gave it to us,” he said. “Once colleges went to letter jackets, the high schools did. They followed the big guy.”
Boyle wore his college jacket for more than 10 years.
Until … “The next door neighbor’s dog chewed it up,” he said. “It was out airing on the clothes line. The Great Dane liked the leather sleeves. It’s history.”