De Soto High School has a new logo which will be used in future events along with some of the older logos that already exist. The main person involved with this new logo is Associate Principal/Athletic Director Ryan Johnson, but he had some help with outside companies.

“The opportunity presented itself, we have a partnership with BSN for athletic apparel and equipment,” Johnson said. “Two of their sister companies are Herff Jones and Varsity for cheerleading and dance [apparel].”

These three companies created an “impact program” which worked with many DHS staff to come up with this logo. Herff Jones is commonly associated with DHS yearbooks, but with this partnership, the company will be part of graduation at DHS next year.

“I worked with various stakeholders including most of our head coaches who gave input on what they wanted and how they wanted it to look,” Johnson said.

While DHS has obtained a new logo, that does not mean they will just throw out some of the older ones.

“We love the ‘D logo,’ and that has not gone away. The [new] mascot is just kind of a secondary,” Johnson said. “So if people want to use the [new] mascot, it’s new, it’s modern, it’s been updated, [but] we have the D to go with as well.”

Even though this mascot is going to be used school wide, Johnson is working with various coaches to come up with individual mascots for each team.

“We’re currently working with each sports team (and) each coach is coming in and we are creating just a team specific logo,” Johnson said. “It cleans up logos so teams have something they can use for their twitter and anything they publicize.”

Assistant wrestling coach and physics teacher Benjamin Cook thinks that the new wildcat will do a good job at bringing together sports and activities.

“I think a lot of coaches were using different Wildcats and now we have something that will kind of unify sports and activities in the high school,” Cook said. “It just gives a unified front as far as athletics go.”

However, this new mascot is not well liked among all students at De Soto.

“From everyone I talked to, they like the old [mascot] better, and they’re not too crazy about the new one,” junior Sydney Janesko said. “I think the new mascot is kind of dull compared to the old mascot, and the old one had a lot more detail compared to this one.”

Despite some negative comments, Johnson along with many others are excited to embrace this new change to DHS.

“I know they put in a lot of effort to get to where they are now,” Cook said.