Avon’s Board of Education voted unanimously at its June 24 meeting to approve the use of two official images to accompany the district’s new, River Hawks nickname.
One of the images depicts a fearsome River Hawk in flight with its talons open wide. The other is a friendlier version of the River Hawk for use in our Elementary School.
The two images were developed by Vaysen Studios and included significant input from Avon students and staff.
“In the middle and high schools, we organized two focus groups of students in grades 5 through 12 to provide feedback on some of the features they liked about different River Hawks options from Vaysen Studios and then Vaysen incorporated that feedback into new versions of the images,” said High School Principal Ryan Wagner. “Students gave specific feedback on the detail and coloring of the feathers, the talons - they liked one of the River Hawk options where the talons were out - and they preferred the hawk to be soaring, as opposed to some of the other options where it was more stationary.”
In May, students and staff in the middle and high schools voted on two final River Hawks options from Vaysen, with the version ultimately adopted by the Board of Education garnering 329 of the 584 votes cast, or 56 percent.
“This is an exciting step forward and I’m grateful to everyone who’s helped us get to this point,” said Superintendent Dr. Ryan Pacatte. “We began the process of determining a new name more than a year ago and to finally have a tangible name and image for our students to unite behind is really gratifying.”
In the coming weeks, our district will continue to work with Vaysen Studios to create additional imagery and designs such as letterheads and seals, to accompany the official River Hawks images.
One of the two official images approved by the Avon Board of Education to accompany the district’s new, River Hawks nickname. This River Hawk image is the friendlier of the two and is intended to be used primarily with younger students in Avon Elementary School.