This fall, two new sets of teams will be competing in Iowa sports. Both schools chose black, purple, and silver as team colors. Both have nicknames related to severe weather. Both start the school year today.
But that’s where the similarities stop.
One of the schools is Baxter, which ended its athletics sharing agreement with Collins-Maxwell after being rebuffed on whole-grade sharing and is now going it alone. The other is Iowa City Liberty, in North Liberty, the third all-new high school to open in Iowa since the Baby Boomers came through. Liberty will open with only a handful of seniors, but the total of students in the other three grades combined is twice Baxter’s entire K-12 enrollment.
Baxter will be the Bolts, although Bulldogs was the pre-sharing nickname. Liberty is the Lightning, which automatically earns a spot on my Worst Names list for not being a plural noun ending in S.
There are North Tama connections to both. Baxter is joining the Iowa Star Conference, and principal Rob Luther told the Newton Daily News, “The sports are the same, but instead of going to Roland-Story we are going to North Tama and instead of North Polk we are going to Colo-NESCO.” Matt Degner, a 1998 North Tama graduate, is assistant superintendent of the Iowa City school district, which Liberty High is a part of.
Liberty is opening because of the explosive growth in Iowa City’s suburbs. Baxter has a new identity because another town didn’t want to lose its high school. Together, they represent the ends of Iowa’s school spectrum. It just so happens that they will do so wearing the same colors.