Homegrown school spirit: McHenry High students design, print and sell their own spirit gear

The Warrior Shack isn’t just a trailer in the middle of the track at McHenry’s McCracken Athletic Field.

It’s a mobile store selling McHenry High School spirit gear. Getting it up and running brought students from several academic study areas together. The T-shirts, sweaters and hoodies sold, emblazoned with the Warrior mascot, are both conceived by and designed and printed by their classmates.

Once costs for production are covered, a portion of those sales will help the school’s Business Professionals of America club earn money toward competition costs. It’s those students who work the shack during games.

The trailer is a student-led initiative.”

—   McHenry High School District 156 Superintendent Ryan McTague

The Warrior Shack was unveiled Sept. 29 during the school’s homecoming football game.

“The trailer is a student-led initiative,” McHenry High School District 156 Superintendent Ryan McTague said at the ribbon-cutting.

The students and teachers “sold me on the concept of a school store,” he added, thanking them for the idea and for agreeing to operate it during games.

The mobile store was bought through donations from area businesses – Black Diamond, the Bremer Team, Buss Ford and Knapheide Trailers – and the Class of 2023.

“The trailer is beautiful because of all of them,” business instructor Vanessa Kirk said of the business donations.

The trailer itself “is an extension of our learning lab” and includes students from business, marketing, management and design classes, and the school’s student-run print shop, Warrior Ink, Kirk said.

Even the idea of the trailer as a store came, in part, from students.

Ally Schattuck and Emma Blanken, both 17-year-old juniors, had a business class assignment last year. They had to create a business plan for a spirit store and present it to administration.

“Ours was the most organized,” Blanken said, and it was used in the shack’s final plan.

A majority of the gear is both made and sold by McHenry High students, Kirk said. Even the designs were conceived by students.

The marketing students came up with ideas for logos and designs. After narrowing down those concepts, students had to poll at least 10% of the student body on which ideas and designs they liked the best. That, Kirk said, is market research.

Students in Matt Connor’s graphic design class took those ideas to the next level. Using professional graphic design software, the concepts were made into logos by his students. His production class makes the final wearable gear, Kirk said.

Senior Mollie Hobson, 17, designed the trailer’s distinctive wrap as part of her classwork using Adobe Creative software.

“It was a challenge. ... It has to line up perfectly,” Hobson said.

Creating the design meant knowing how it would look as it goes around a corner, on panels that will lift up and out of sight later, and from every angle.

Senior Kyle Stojak, 17, helped put the vinyl wrap on the trailer.

It’s harder than it looks, he said. The trailer surface had to be completely dust-free to lay on the vinyl, working out locations and getting rid of air bubbles as they worked.

By working on the Warrior Shack, Stojak said he learned “how to expand my creativity in anything graphics” and get a working knowledge of the technology and art behind it.

The technology side also included ensuring the donors supplied the correct graphics images, Hobson said. A too-small logo in the wrong format could mean the donor’s logos would pixelate when blown up for the wrap.

“There was a lot of back-and-forth” with the sponsors on that to get the right logos, Hobson said.

There are more store plans, including a space at both the lower and upper campuses for selling spirit gear during in-school games, Kirk said.

Accounting students also will have a hand in running the stores, forecasting sales and inventory needs.

“It will be a self-sustaining business,” Kirk said.