Lapeer unveils new nickname and new colors. It may be shocking to see.

Written Wednesday December 25th, at 1:20 PM

It looks like that the new Lapeer High School will have a new name this upcoming fall. In a surprising and questioning move, Lapeer High School will be nicknamed the Lightning for the 2014-2015 school year.

Lapeer officials claim that the Lightning name portrays speed and power but also light, creative energy, innovation, and transformation.

The colors at Lapeer will be very similar to the primary colors at each of the former schools Lapeer East and Lapeer West. Lapeer East wore Green while Lapeer West wore Dark Blue. Lapeer will make both Dark Blue and Green their school colors while the Gold could be discontinued, be a third color, or replaced with White.

Lapeer will also join a new conference in the 2014-2015 school year as they will be too big for the Flint Metro League and move into the Saginaw Valley Association. A conference that includes Davison, Flint Carman Ainsworth, Saginaw, Saginaw Arthur Hill, Bay City Central, Bay City Western, Midland, Midland Dow, Flint Powers Catholic, and Flint Southwestern Academy.

My personal thoughts on this move, this is a horrible nickname for Lapeer to nickname themselves the Lightning. I’m a storm spotter myself and to see a bright light from a weather system as the name of your school and that thought of saying that I’m a Lightning does not sound right, no offense. I know the hockey team in Lapeer is named the Lightning but to name the new school with that name is a little odd to see.

I know that Tampa Bay has a hockey franchise called the Lightning but there is no other professional or High School team that I can think of that has the name Lightning to their nickname.

I thought the name Griffins would had made better sense because of the Eagle and Panther and you combine them to make a Griffin. I questioned why Bloomfield Hills a few years ago decided to name itself the Blackhawks after Bloomfield Hills Andover and Bloomfield Hills Lahser merged. I see that was a big problem because there were too many schools that had bird names in Oakland County like Falcons, Red Hawks, Hawks etc but this one is really tough to understand, I’ll be curious to see what the mascot of the Lightning would be if it is an animal or a cloud.

My brother’s personal thought on the Lightning nickname is that while the community decided to place their nickname on hockey, it really doesn’t make much sense. It’s not a good nickname to use for a high school setting. Who really calls themselves the Lightning? I also don’t like that they decided to ditch the yellow that both East and West proudly wore. It made a great secondary color. Can’t see either green or dark blue being a true secondary color. I’m also curious to see how Lapeer will compete in the Saginaw Valley especially against the likes of Davison, Carman Ainsworth, and Powers, teams that they have to compete with on a regular basis. Personally I would have liked to see Lapeer compete with the likes of Lake Orion, Oxford, and Clarkston, especially Oxford as both East and West have history with them but they could compete against them as a non conference opponent.

We’ll see what happens with this one here Merry Christmas folks.