Today I am focusing on two more of the suburban purple and gold teams in the Des Moines metro - one on the north side and one on the south side.
The Dragons have an up and down athletics history with no little consistency from one year to the next. But they do have the population and money to build a strong lax program and pose a threat to the more established teams right away. Considering the high level academics associated with both the city and the sport, this should not be too much of an issue.
For the Dragons' lax uniform, I utilized the available flame insert. It seemed appropriate given their name and current adoption of flames in their official logos. As a result the large insert strip on the shorts and both jerseys is purple.
With the helmet I too a less is more approach. The Vegas mohawk recalls the glistening back of a dragon. The Vegas chin seems to balance the bucket.
Johnston was an early adopted of Vegas gold and I have to admit that it works well with both their dark purple and the "Dragons" name. Although I have to admit that I find their flaming J logo to be too generic; I am not too fond of the European style dragon logos either. For some reason I always picture an Asian style dragon contorted into a rough J shape. Kind of like this one from the school's website:
Indianola Indians
When posting about two teams in the metro with very similar color schemes, it is easy to fall into the trap of doing the same exact thing or trying to make the changes too drastic. In this case I tried to minimalize the differences to reflect the different schools' mascots and gold hue.
Much like Johnston, Indianola is often overlooked as a suburb. The high school is tucked away on a minor highway about a mile off the main drag. Their athletics program is spotty at best, but the Indians have produced professional athletes in the past.
Like Waukee, Indianola wears athletic gold. I chose to minimize gold in the helmet by applying it only to the chin and chin strap. The vent covers are also gold to represent feathers worn on a headress.
The school's official logo is an I (usually purple) within a circle with two feathers attached representing a Dream Catcher. The I on top of crossed sticks is merely a stand-in, although it is not the worst logo I have ever seen (if I do say so myself). Including lax sticks on a lax uniform is often frowned upon...
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