Team Names – How?

[JaneYoung]

This is a little long.
- The team's high school is LBJ High School and their school colors are purple and white. The school mascot is the jaguar.
- Austin has a colony of bats that nest under the Congress bridge, the Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis). They are a seasonal tourist attraction due to their daily foraging migrations at sunset.
- Austin has a minor league hockey team, the Ice Bats, named in honor of these bats. This hockey team formed about the time our team was looking for a name.
When it came time to register the team for FIRST, the name for the team was slow in developing. Finally with deadline approaching, our teacher, Mr. Tony Bertucci, told the team that if they didn't come up with a name, he was going to name the team, The Robo Bats. The team didn't like that and came up with Purple Haze with 2 thoughts in mind. They thought it still worked with the school colors and they thought they knew something their teacher didn't. They figured he wouldn't have any idea who Jimi Hendrix was or know anything about Purple Haze and that it would be an inside joke. They got that part wrong but the name stuck. Every couple of years or so, we tie dye tees for the team and this year our bumpers were tie dyed.