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ATHLETICS
Tucked into the basement of Lee and Helene Sapp Fieldhouse is an expansive and neatly organized room that serves as something of a time capsule. There are rows of Maverick athletic gear; old mascot heads sitting atop a soda machine; classic bumper stickers plastered on a door; and numerous other memorabilia that take visitors back in time through UNO Athletics history. For Bill Sanders, UNO’s head equipment manager since 2005 and keeper of all things Maverick, this is the place to be.
MAKING A MARK INTRODUCED IN 2011, UNO’S MAVERICK ICON GETS HIGH MARKS FOR ITS MODERN, SLEEK DESIGN By Don Kohler
“I grew up in these hallways,” he says, motioning to photos and plaques of Maverick legends past and present. Sanders’ 82-yearold grandmother Beverly Sanders served as UNO’s equipment manager from 1974-2001, so he has enjoyed a front row seat to the many changes in the athletic program. “I became a Mav because of her,” he says. But he’s not living in the past. Sanders is excited about changes that have occurred within his growing department, including those made to the iconic Maverick bull. “The new mark is such a clean look now and easier to put on uniforms,” Sanders says. “It was a good move.” The move to a new look began in earnest in 2009 with the arrival of Athletic Director Trev Alberts, who championed a campus-wide effort to refresh the UNO mark. Alberts says the athletic department needed an edge with building its alumni and booster base in Omaha. “It really struck me in 2009 that we were trying to find a niche in this market,” he says. “You had the Cornhuskers and Big Red and the Creighton Bluejays that both had established brands. My thought was, ‘How do we gain traction and relevance in the market?’”
Athletic Director Trev Alberts
Alberts and his team were keenly focused on the Maverick mascot. “Our logos looked hand-drawn,” he says. “We had nine or 10 iterations of it, and there was a lot of detail that made it difficult to reproduce on uniforms and other gear. It wasn’t clean and applied consistently across campus.” Alberts and others from UNO solicited the help of Torch Creative, a Dallas design studio that focuses on branding, logo design and development. The company was tasked with breaking down the origins of the Maverick logo and developing a new mark and style guide to direct the athletic department. Alberts assembled a committee of athletic and academic staff, along with students to discuss the Maverick brand with officials from Torch.