School also receives new mascot and colors.
Over the last few weeks, much has happened with the schools in the West Bolivar Consolidated School District.
The board decided to close Ray Brooks School in March. Since then, there have been discussions on whether to change the names of West Bolivar High School and Shaw High School along with their mascots and school colors.
The school district consists of West Bolivar Elementary School, West Bolivar Middle School and West Bolivar High School with the Eagle as the mascot and the school colors red, white and blue. In Shaw, McEvans School is the elementary and middle school, but the high school was named Shaw High School. Several years ago, Shaw High School had to be moved to the McEvans campus because the school’s building was beyond repair. Shaw’s mascot was the Hawk with its colors green and gold, while McEvans’ mascot is the Warrior with the school’s colors maroon, white and gold.
The school district earlier this month decided that West Bolivar would get to keep its name, while Shaw High School would have to change its name, mascot and colors. On Thursday, the WBCSD Board of Trustees approved to change the name of Shaw High School to McEvans School with the mascot being the Warrior and the school colors being maroon, white and gold.
“The West Bolivar Schools will keep their mascot and colors since all three were the same,” said West Bolivar Consolidated School District Superintendent John Taylor. “However, that cannot be the case for the Shaw campus. We have merged two schools that had different colors and different mascots into one school.”
The other option that was presented to the board for mascot and school colors were the Panthers with the Carolina blue, black and white colors.
One thing that has impacted the decision process for trying to determine a new school name with a new mascot and school colors is the COVID-19 pandemic that has had the schools closed.
Under normal circumstances, Taylor would have liked to have had a lot of student participation in the process.
“The plan was to have students vote not only on the mascot, but the colors and narrow it down and have them vote again,” said Taylor. “We’ve got two things working against us. We’re pressed for time and students not being on campus right now. We would have gotten close to 100-percent participation had they been in school. With it being a virtual meeting and virtual interaction, we haven’t gotten the participation that we would like.”
Another aspect that factored into the decision was getting the proper renovations to the campus to accommodate the change in a timely manner.
Shaw High School head girls basketball coach Ricky Lunford, who has coached at Shaw for over a decade, said having just one name for the elementary school, middle school and high school will be good in the long run.
“With K – 12th grades and just one name, I think there will be more togetherness,” said Lunford. “Everybody will be under the same umbrella.”
Shaw High head football coach Montrelli Finley hasn’t really thought too much about sports or school name changes with the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Andy Collier– Sports Editor, The Bolivar Bullet