West Aurora High School’s 150-history is intertwined with athletics, from the school’s Blackhawks nickname to its rivalry with East Aurora and the bust of Black Hawk himself, displayed proudly on the West Aurora campus.
The district’s history — sports or otherwise — is taking center stage this year as the district celebrates the high school’s 150th year with a gala Jan. 26 at Piper’s Banquets in Aurora. Tickets are $75 per person.
The school’s first classes were held in September 1868 on the site of the current Todd Early Childhood Center on Oak Avenue. The first west side high school class of five graduated in 1870. Other buildings came and went until the present-day high school was built in 1953.
As Aurora prospered, so too did the schools on each side of the river, and a rivalry was born that continues to today.
East Aurora started the area’s first football team and scheduled a game against Elgin on Thanksgiving Day 1893.
East Aurora casually asked some West Aurora kids to set up a practice game to get ready for the Elgin game, according to Neal Ormond, a 1958 graduate well-known as the West Aurora Blackhawks broadcaster for football and basketball games. Ormond, in his 54th year as the voice of the Blackhawks, is known for his keen sense of history and meticulous sports record-keeping.
Ormond collaborated with his wife, Mary Ormond, to research archives and newspaper clippings covering notable events in sports that are part of the tradition of excellence and loyal school spirit of generations of alums. It’s that hard work that has uncovered the details of West Aurora High School’s athletic history.
That includes the planned 1893 Thanksgiving game between East Aurora and Elgin. When a snowstorm canceled the game with Elgin, West Aurora stepped in as the opponent for East Aurora that Thanksgiving. East won 28-0.
The two teams quickly became major rivals, Ormond said, with upward of 9,000 spectators coming out to watch the games on Hurd’s Island, a site chosen as a neutral location in the middle of the river, he said.
The games there ended in 1920 with the coming of the railroad tracks across the island, he said.
East Aurora built the area’s first football field, and from 1920 to 1926 all of the games were played at the Roy E. Davis Field, at the present location of East Aurora High School.
West Aurora High School built its own football field in 1926, Ormond said, and the surrounding cornfields became the present day West Aurora High School that was built in 1953.
“Both schools had the same situation, the football fields were built first and high school buildings were built around them,” Ormond said.
The tradition of playing on Thanksgiving Day ended after the 1953 season, mainly because of the cold weather for that time of the year, he said.
Sports have contributed to a lot of the milestones for the high school and the district, Ormond said.
“The significance of East-West in athletics was a factor in the development of the schools,” he said.
“Each school wanted to do something that met what the other school was doing and better them. It has been to the benefit of each school,” said Ormond, a former school board member.
“In the early days, there were some rugged rivalries,” Ormond said. “I remember being in high school in the 1950s when city fathers requested that all students not to cross the river during the week of the East-West game because if you crossed over, you might have been roughed-up.
“Nowadays we have a much healthier attitude. Now the theme is ‘divided by the river but united by the games.’ We do a lot of things together to encourage students to make friends.”
The football teams met for the 126th time in October.
West Aurora alum and board member Allyson Herget said her children are third generation Blackhawks. Her father Richard Hunt graduated from West High in 1930.
“It’s definitely a cause for a celebration,” Herget said of the school’s 150th anniversary.
“The high school has maintained a great tradition and legacy even throughout all of the changes.”
While the football rivalry was building, the West High band was formed in 1920. In 1936, students adopted the Blackhawks name for its athletics teams in honor of the Native American Fox and Sac tribal leader Black Hawk, who had lived in northern Illinois more than 100 years earlier.
“The students wanted the team to emulate his leadership of a minority group,” Ormond said.
The students supported the Blackhawks name, in part because the 1906 high school was built on Blackhawk Street, but mostly because Black Hawk was an icon, Ormond said.
Ormond’s Class of 1958 dedicated the bronze bust of Black Hawk in a ceremony held in 2011.
“We commissioned research to find out more about Black Hawk. We found out how great he was,” Ormond said.
The great-, great-grandson of Black Hawk visited West Aurora High school to thank the alums for the honor.
The graduates went to the Library of Congress to get an original lithograph to learn what Black Hawk looked like for the sculpture.
“We do not consider him a mascot, but an icon,” Ormond said.
“We are paying tribute to the man and what he stands for in our athletic teams.”
