Contact: Dan Lukes, Assistant AD/Athletic Communications - St. Norbert College, dan.lukes@snc.edu

DE PERE, Wisconsin — Why the Green Knights? The Green Knights… They were once known as the “Juggernaut” or, sometimes, the “Green Juggernaut.”
     
That was back in the early years of St. Norbert sports - the 1920s and before, when the sports program was a combination of high school and college teams and games.
     
Later, into the early 1930s, St. Norbert teams were known as the “Green and Gold Wave,” then, sometimes, just the “Green Wave,” or the “Goldmen.”
     
In 1933, the college yearbook, the Des Peres, was built on a medieval theme with lots of references to gallant Knights.
     
And in 1934, the name “Green Knights” was pinned to the college varsity teams.
     
The late Rev. Dennis M. Burke, O. Praem., former president of St. Norbert College, said the Knights idea was promoted largely by the Rev. L.A.V. DeCleene, O. Praem., a mathematics professor at St. Norbert in those years.
     
Father DeCleene had been a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point before joining the Norbertine Order and was quite taken with the West Point nickname of “Black Knights of the Hudson.”
     
Perhaps St. Norbert’s location on the banks of the Fox River contributed to this memory and fondness for the nickname. While St. Norbert’s athletes never did become Green Knights of the Fox, they did evolve into Green Knights.
     
But why “Green?”
     
When the Norbertines, the Founding Fathers of St. Norbert College, originally from Berne Abbey in Holland, came to De Pere, they brought with them the Norbertine traditions that included a coat of arms primarily in red, white and blue. But being a descendant of the original abbey, the Norbertines in America kept the design but changed the colors to Dartmouth green and white with gold. The colors are said to have been suggested by an English professor originally from Dartmouth and seconded by the Rev. John A. Van Heertem, O. Praem., who had visited Dartmouth and came away favorably impressed.
     
In 1931, to differentiate between the high school and college departments, it was decided that the high school would retain the green and white colors while the college would adopt “Dartmouth green and light old gold” as its colors.
     
And that remains the official colors of today’s Green Knights.
     
P.S. - Many out-of-town observers note the similarity between St. Norbert colors and those of the Green Bay Packers. The
Packers donned blue and gold as their colors in the mid-1950s, and then switched to the current green and gold scheme shortly before the Lombardi era.