Hotstuff History

The official beginning of Eagle Valley High School
   as remembered by Janice Starr

EVHS was formally formed in 1959 after a vote of the county combined Eagle High School (Green and Gold Eagles) and Eagle County High School (Purple and Gold Pirates). The class of 1960 was the first graduating class from the newly formed school (my class, incidentally).
When we found ourselves together (given the fact the Eagle and Gypsum had been rivals over the years and that we really didn't like each other all that much), the school decided to vote for everything new--mascot, colors, school song, etc. Several different possibilities were put to a vote and the colors black and white and mascot Devils were chosen by an all-school vote.
Next in line was the song. The music department decided on the music for the song and a school-wide contest was held for the words for the music. While riding around Eagle (cruising) a few nights, Susan Koonce, Pat Price, Judy Seabry and myself made up the words for the song, submitted them and our version won the school-wide voting!
The first year of EVHS was interesting in terms of athletics (or lack thereof). We had football, basketball and boys track. Football was 8-man and the kids from Eagle wouldn't block, etc. for the kids from Gypsum, and visa versa. Interesting season! Battle Mountain (combined Minturn Panthers and Red Cliff Bulldogs) became our new nemesis (hasn't changed much??), with Roaring Fork following closely behind.
Obviously, after the first year things began to smooth out and the teams at least played like teams, not individuals!
   Hot Stuff was adopted as the mascot after I started teaching, sometime after 1965 when Joe Hopkins, who was the editor of the school newspaper (and had his own "underground" paper, where he said what he wasn't allowed to say in the school paper!) drew a rendition of the Hot Stuff cartoon character for the front page of the paper. It caught on and Jack Rochford paid big $$ to have a chenille Hot Stuff made for his letter sweater. His had blue eyes, incidentally. The little guy caught on in the next couple of years and was officially adopted, although I don't remember which year that happened. It was certainly a nice change from the ugly Devil we originally had! The rest is "history!"