Who wears the coolest helmet in Delaware high school football? The readers have spoken
When football coach John Wilson ordered new uniforms for his St. Georges Technical High School team in 2019, he decided to change the Hawks’ helmets, too.
St. Georges had been wearing white helmets with an interlocking, blue and green “SG” logo on the side. But Wilson had the outer shells of his team’s headgear painted silver.
“I thought that would be a better look for us,” he said. “Because really, nobody has a silver helmet with a blue facemask.”
It set the Hawks apart. A year later, a St. Georges football player used what he learned in one of the school’s career programs to design a new logo for the helmets.
And last week, after a frenzied final round of voting on Delaware Online, St. Georges’ helmet was crowned the best among Delaware’s 46 high school football teams.
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“I was aware,” Wilson said Monday, with a chuckle. “I voted one time out of the 190,000 people that voted. … It’s great that we have that many fans.”
Truth be told, some fans may have voted more than once. But St. Georges pulled out all the stops and finished with 191,707 votes, 50.74 percent of the total.
Cape Henlopen traded the lead with the Hawks all week before finishing with 178,548 votes, 47.26 percent of the total. Wilmington Friends was a distant third with 5,733, followed by A.I. du Pont.
In all, the final round of voting drew 377,805 votes.
“I think it was a couple of parents who got behind it, and they worked hard at it because it was important to them to have that recognition,” Wilson said. “It’s good, because we come together from all different areas of New Castle County and have to create this community here at our school, which we try really hard to do.”
Before the 2020 season, Wilson asked football player Gary Cook, who was enrolled in the vo-tech school’s Web & Print Technology career program, to design a logo for the helmet. Cook came up with the aggressive, green and blue Hawk that has been on St. Georges’ helmets ever since.
“It’s a good school, and we have some really creative kids,” Wilson said.
Delaware Online’s best football helmet contest began in early October, with voting determining the champions of the state’s seven football districts: A.I. du Pont (1A-1), Conrad (1A-2), Delcastle (2A-1), Wilmington Friends (2A-2), Sussex Tech (2A-3), Hodgson (3A-1) and St. Georges (3A-2).
That narrowed the field to seven, with Cape Henlopen added as the district runner-up who received the most votes. A semifinal round of voting narrowed the field to four. Then St. Georges prevailed in the final round of voting last week.
Contact Brad Myers at bmyers@delawareonline.com. Follow on X (aka Twitter): @BradMyersTNJ
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware high school football helmet contest winner revealed
