History of the Batavia Bulldog extends beyond high school mascot

As Dennis Piron and Matt Holm see it, few mascots and nicknames come more naturally than Batavia and its Bulldogs — a near-perfect fit attested to by their bulldog-themed arm tattoos.

“There’s a lot of pride there, a real unifying thing,” Piron said. “It’s about being loyal, hardworking, tenacious.

“And it sure has grabbed on nice, hasn’t it?”

Since 2011, Piron has served as head football coach at Batavia High School. Together with Holm, the school’s current defensive coordinator and former longtime baseball coach, Piron has led the Batavia Battlin’ Bulldogs to the rarified heights of high school football, winning two state titles since 2013 and still more conference titles, helping to spread Bulldog mania throughout the southernmost of the Tri-Cities.

But while that success has fired up the Bulldogs fan base, Batavia High School alumni like Piron and Holm know the identity stretches much farther back, to earlier periods in their area’s history.

Perhaps no Batavian has devoted more time and energy to researching the origins of Batavia’s athletic nickname than George Scheetz, director of the Batavia Public Library. While only a relatively recent arrival — he moved to Batavia in 2004 — Scheetz said he quickly became one of the community’s biggest history buffs, particularly enamored with all things surrounding the long rivalry between BHS and its Geneva counterpart.

In a historical twist, Scheetz said, the rivalry could have looked markedly different, but for a decision in the 1930s.

According to his research, the bulldog identity almost never materialized. Instead, the high school could easily still be taking the field under the name of “Vikings” — a moniker now associated entirely with Geneva.

“It really would be something, wouldn’t it?” Scheetz said with a laugh.

Originally, he noted, his research indicates both Batavia and Geneva were known to fans by their team colors. In Batavia, that meant the team was known as the “Red and Gold,” or perhaps the “Crimson and Gold.” And in Geneva, the team was known as the “Blue and White.”

The respective schools maintain those color schemes to this day.

However, at some point in the early 20th century, BHS squads became one of the first in the area to adopt an official nickname, becoming known as the Vikings.

That team name, however, was dropped at some point — Scheetz said his research doesn’t indicate exactly why. But it may have been related to an intra-Batavia rivalry between the primarily Scandinavian residents on one side of the Fox River, and the largely non-Scandinavian population on the other. With a paucity of residents of Scandinavian descent on the squad, the name Vikings may have simply proven politically unacceptable.

But whatever the reason, the nickname was dropped in the 1930s, and by the mid-1940s, it had been replaced by the now-beloved Battlin’ Bulldogs, leaving the Vikings name to Geneva.

Scheetz noted he can find no reference at any time to an actual live bulldog at BHS, nothing akin to the canine known as Uga (pronounced “Uh-gah”) that runs on the field with the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs.

However, in the 1960s, he says, students voted on the name for their official bulldog icon mascot, settling on Brutus. The vote, he said, appeared tied to a contest to boost basketball ticket sales.

Through the decades, Scheetz and Piron said, Brutus and the Battlin’ Bulldogs have come to not only capture the interest of the Batavia community, but in many ways reflect what they say are part of the community’s nature and character.

Of the Tri-Cities, Scheetz noted Batavia has retained ties to its historical character as an industrial, blue-collar community. Piron said, of the three, Batavia has most retained its character as a “small-ish town.”

“It would be fair to say that some of the values associated with those characteristics, have come to be imbued into the ‘Bulldog spirit,’” Scheetz said.

Piron and Holm agree: That spirit has really come to life, often in vivid color, in recent years.

Living in and attending school in Batavia in the 1970s and ‘80s, they said, the Bulldog identity was real, but “you didn’t really hear a lot about it.”

Today, however, fueled by the school’s recent run of success in football and other sports, adults and children in Batavia, down to the grade school and youth football levels, proudly display their Bulldog pride. Piron and Holm wear that spirit on their arms — literally.

Holm boasts a full bulldog face on his arm, and Piron displays a dog paw.

“I tell people if I were to go coach anywhere else — which I am definitely not! — I’d need to cut my arm off,” Holm said with a laugh.

“It’s an attitude thing. Here, everybody’s a dog.”

This story originally appeared in the August issue of Kane County Magazine.