The journey to display the best high school football uniforms in the United States enters our third installment. Last week, we looked at an orange school without a lot of orange, a modern high school in the plains of Idaho, and the former school of this basketball guy named LeBron James.
Our Countdown So Far:
#27 Vanden HS, California
#26 McKay HS, Oregon
#25 Bishop Gorman, Nevada
#24 Orange HS, Ohio
#23 Mountain View HS, Idaho
#22 St. Vincent-St. Mary, Ohio
As always, we welcome your ratings in the comment sections, plus any submissions especially if they are from small schools not well known throughout the country. On today’s countdown we travel to a California powerhouse, a bourgeoning school in the desert, and one of the largest schools in Texas and all of the United States.
#21 Long Beach Polytechnic High School
Location: Long Beach, California
Mascot: Jackrabbits
Enrollment: 4,002 (public)
The 3rd largest public school in California has a long and illustrious history in football and athletics being named Sports Illustrated’s “Sports School of the Century” and has sent more players to the NFL than any other in America. Some of its most famous NFL alumni include Mark Carrier, DeSean Jackson, Jurrell Casey, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marcedes Lewis, and Willie McGinest.
Poly, like most national schools, has cycled through some different looks throughout the years. For a long time, they were an Adidas school introducing a bunch of different uniforms, including all-black, wild script plastered on their jerseys, and even some different helmets. Now a Nike school, Poly has returned to their traditional gold helmets and a really clean overall look. Composite 5-star 2023 recruit Nicholaus Iamaleava is the quarterback at Poly this fall after transferring out earlier in his high school career.
#20 Chaparral High School
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Mascot: Firebirds
Enrollment: 2,292 (public)
Not to be confused with Chaparral High School in the suburbs of Denver, today’s no. 20 team is the school in Scottsdale, Arizona to the northeast of Phoenix. In last year’s 2022 cycle, defensive lineman Anthony Lucas went here as the top player in the state. This is also the school that Notre Dame’s Davonte Neal transferred out of back in 2012. Sadly, Neal was recently in the news for all the wrong reasons.
As far as mascots go, it’s tough to beat “Firebirds” and the school really leans into it well. They used to rely primarily on just red and black but in recent years have embraced yellow for a more unique uniform set. Their away uniforms can look pretty cool with yellow pants and white helmets. These all-red home uniforms are great, with the red firebird helmet among the best in the country.
#19 Duncanville High School
Location: Duncanville, Texas
Mascot: Panthers
Enrollment: 4,400 (public)
Our next team is down in the southwestern suburbs of Dallas on an absolutely massive 863,000 square foot campus in the city of Duncanville, Texas. The Panthers recently made it to the 6A state championship this past season but fell 17-10 to North Shore. Their lone state title came back in 1998.
In recent years, Duncanville has relied on a lot of blue with 1980’s New York Giants-esque helmets. However, they introduced the above red and white heavy look with blue accents clearly with inspiration from the SMU Mustangs “Dallas” uniforms. The “D’Ville” script in red looks awesome above the blue numbers. Also, check out the panther logo on the right chest.
Next up: A basic look from New Jersey, a school close to Notre Dame’s heart, and another Texas high school makes the list.Â
If you squint, it kind of looks like Chapparral uses orange.
I jumped from a smaller rural school of ~50 in a graduating class to a district with ~300 kids in a class. This was from 6th to 7th grade and it was a massive culture shock. I can’t even fathom high schools out there with 4x as many people as what I experienced.
I don’t get how one would make friends in a school that large, but I suppose the same could be said for college.
your honor i nominate spartanburg high school for consideration for this list
and it’s not *not* because of the color scheme
this is not the best picture available but it is really all i have on hand atm
yessir
getting new gold pants this fall to further complete the ND cosplay
my senior year we got to vote on uniform combos every week and i was the only person to vote for gold pants lol
to the point where when they ended up getting new ones for this year my HC texted me about it
I’m not sure what Gaffney is doing in the picture. All whites with black helmet?
Also, Long Beach Polytechnic should get negative points for #1’s socks.
Poly is basically USC junior varsity, to be fair.
Hampton Crabbers #1 or we riot
Holy cow!
What is written on the script across the chest? What’s the uniform manufacturer??
Looks like “The Boys of Fall”
Also, if you google other versions of that crab mascot, it has teeth.
I love it.
I believe they change them up all the time, not as fancy and modern as some of the ones on your list. Hampton is was like the evil empire back in the day, always liked the jersey though.
Just for nightmares and the like…
I need a 30 for 30 on this logo.
The name “Crabbers” and the logo are incongruent with each other. Should either be a picture of a guy, a la Gorton’s, or they should be the “Crabs”
First 20 minutes of the doc will cover this.
If a crab can commandeer or grow human teeth where he shouldn’t have them, I don’t see why he could be presumed to not be a crabber himself. Lack of opposable thumbs be dammed!