Wheaton Warrenville South: The Tiger Legacy

When the Wheaton Warrenville South Tigers celebrate the 20th anniversary of the school's opening and its first state championship, they'll keep a school spirit alive that dates back over 100 years.

But the Tiger history that includes the Belushi brothers (and sister), Bob Woodward and Red Grange could have dissolved in 1992, when Wheaton Central moved to Wheaton Warrenville to form Wheaton Warrenville South.

Before Wheaton Warrenville South got its name in 1992, it was Wheaton Warrenville High School from 1973 until 1983, one of three high schools in District 200.

In the early ‘80s, enrollment in District 200 started to decline. In 1981, the board of education decided to consolidate space and close one of the high schools, move sixth graders from elementary schools to middle schools and move ninth graders from middle schools to high schools, said Dr. Chuck Baker, former Wheaton Central and Wheaton Warrenville South principal and the district’s acting superintendent during the 2009-10 school year.

Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part series about the 20th anniversary of Wheaton Warrenville South, the move from Wheaton Central High School to Wheaton Warrenville South and the Tigers’ first state championship.

Read the first story: Wheaton Warrenville South Homecoming to Honor First State Championship

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“There were a number of arguments about which of the three (high) schools to close,” before the board decided to close Wheaton Warrenville and convert it to Wheaton Warrenville Middle School, beginning with the 1983-84 school year, Baker said.

“That set Wheaton on fire.”

Furious with the board’s decision, residents of Warrenville and the south side of Wheaton formed Citizens United for Education (CUE), which sought to withdraw from the district and create a new one, Baker said. They never did.

Instead, they mobilized and were successful in electing south-siders to the board, Baker said. A few years later, the new officials decided to move students back to 1993 Tiger Trail, and send middle school students to Wheaton Central, or Hubble Middle School.

The move was not a good idea, Baker said. The building that previously housed about 1,000 students was not equipped for 1,800.

The district executed the plan. In 1987, the board floated a $6 million bond referendum for improvements at the high schools, but hadn’t earmarked it to one school, Baker said.

“It was a foregone conclusion when that passed, what it was going to be used for… It was very acrimonious. It pitted Warrenville against Wheaton and the south side against the north side, but the really shameful part was, it did not have the best interest of students at heart,” he said. “It was all about getting a school back on the south side.

“It was all about politics on the south side and Warrenville, versus the old center of Wheaton. I was right in the middle of all of it as a principal, and also had strong feelings about what the board was doing for the welfare of the kids because they were moving to a substandard (building).”

Keeping the Tiger Legacy

Anticipating the move in the fall of 1992, Baker worked with students to figure out an identity for the new school. Dedicated Wheaton Warrenville fans fought to keep the legacy of the 10-year-old school, instead of that of the school that stood in Wheaton for decades—a mascot for over a century.

“There were still battles fought over the school name, colors, mascot, the tradition of Wheaton Central… There was a faction of people who wanted the Wheaton Central legacy left at that building… They wanted the Tiger, and orange and black, to stay there (at Wheaton Central)… and go back to Wheaton Warrenville High School and assume everything that was there,” Baker said.

“You’re ditching a 100-plus-year history for the history of a 10-year-old high school, and in my mind, the Wheaton Community school legacy was far more powerful and connected to (Wheaton) communities—including the south side, than a building that had been there for 10 years could possibly match.”

Ron Muhitch, Wheaton Warrenville South’s head football coach and defensive coordinator for the 1992 state championship team, said Baker was the reason the Tiger legacy lived.

“Because of that, our athletic programs, at that time, were still identifiably very much orange and black, and Tigers,” he said.

A New Tiger Nation

Wheaton Central staff ran their own version of a PR campaign to sell students on the move and keep them oblivious to the fighting. Baker said the only students in on the drama were student leaders with a hand in deciding the school’s name, seal, colors and mascot.

David Brumfield, a ’93 grad and defensive tackle for the ’92 state championship Tigers said staff had gone “above and beyond” to make sure students were comfortable.

With the new name and building and the take-no-prisoners, century-old mascot, students in the 1992-93 school year set the bar for what it meant to be a Tiger, Baker said.

The 1992 state championship football team was an example of the integrity of the students that year.

“The students went off to that school and demonstrated more maturity, more dignity and more integrity than the adults that were involved… The kids stepped up and behaved like true leaders.”

When Phil Adler scored the touchdown that confirmed the Tigers’ first state championship, the drama disappeared, Muhitch said.

“There was a lot of drama that year—on and off the field. But… the drama went away when Phil scored. Everybody felt this was their school, and everybody felt this was the place for the Tigers.”

John Thorne, head coach of the ’92 champions, said the transition wasn’t apparent on the field.

“We had a great mix of families from Warrenville and families from Wheaton… I didn’t know which ones were from which town… I think, in past years, there was some difficulty with players and students from the two communities, but that was not the case."

In retrospect, while poorly conceived and implemented, the move to Wheaton Warrenville South was the right decision, Baker said.

“The school seal of the Tigers, you’ll see, when we knew we were moving… we made a decision to put scholarship, commitment and integrity in the seal… When we left and moved to South, we added, ‘tradition,’ to that seal, because we should always honor tradition of everything that came before us and those kids lived up to that in a remarkable way."