Delaware Blue Hens, or Delaware Fighting Blue Hens, are the teams of the sports program from the University of Delaware. The program consists of 21 teams, from which the most part are women’s. The most famous team is Delaware Blue Hens men’s basketball.
The logo of the athletic teams Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens, which represent the University of Delaware of Newark, Delaware, has gone through at least six updates since the 1930s.
The Delaware Blue Hens logo adopted in 1939 did not look like a real athletic logo – it was more like a shop sign. You could see the lettering “The Blue Hen” and a pretty realistic fat hen with four chicks. The “shop sign” had an elaborate outline.
In 1955, the team introduced an emblem featuring the letter “D” in an old English script. The letter was blue with a yellow outline.
In 1967, the hen returned to the insignia, but now it had a purely athletic look and style. While the Delaware Blue Hens logo was redrawn in 1987, 1999, and 2009, the hen has always preserved it aggressive sports style.
The Delaware Blue Hens logo created in 1987 stayed with the University athletic program for almost a decade. The badge featured a caricature portrait of a blue hen with the white crossed plaster on its beak. The hen image was placed inside the blue letter “D” and accompanied by two wordmark’s — the “The University of Delaware” set in two lines and arched on the top of the badge, in light yellow, and the “Fighting Blue Hens” in stylized black letters set under the image.
The Delaware Blue Hens logo from 1999 featured a more modern image with the blue hen drawn in a different style and placed inside a circular frame in yellow, with a thin black outline. The “University of Delaware” lettering in black capitals of a classy serif typeface was set along the upper part of the frame, while the “Fighting Blue Hens”, written along the bottom part of the yellow ring, was executed in the same typeface, but in a bright blue color.
This design uses the same blue hen mascot as its predecessor. It’s just its head, turned to the right with a determined look. It’s outlined in yellow and put in front of two letters ‘U’ and ‘D’ (for ‘University of Delaware’). There are blue letters with a serif font and a yellow outline.
The hen’s head was carried on into this design, but with a slightly different color scheme. In this logo, it’s located on the left end of a long strip of blue. On this strip, there is the club’s name – ‘Delaware Blue Hens’ – arranged in two lines. The top one has ‘Delaware’ in bigger, yellow characters. The rest is jammed beneath in smaller, white letters.
The women’s team went undefeated in CAA play in the 2011–12 and 2012–13 seasons. They won their first NCAA Tournament game in 2012 and have appeared in the WNIT seven times. The men’s team has appeared in the NCAA Tournament five times. Also, it has made one appearance in the National Invitation Tournament and in the College Basketball Invitational.
What is Delaware Blue Hens?
Delaware Blue Hens is the name of the athletic program of the University of Delaware, where numerous sports teams (both men’s and women’s) compete in such sports disciplines as Tennis, Swimming, Baseball, Basketball, and many more.
Delaware Blue Hens is one of not so many athletic programs that stay loyal to the original design. The look of the athletes’ helmets hasn’t changed much throughout the years, and the main changes were made mostly to the grilles and the shades, but not to the concept in general.
The Delaware Blue Hens helmet design, created in 1959, was based on a dark and intense blue and yellow color palette, with a white grille. The main element here is the yellow decor, with two thick sharpened figures, at the front part, and three yellow stripes coming out of them and connecting at the back part of the helmet.
The redesign of 1969 has only played with the grilles of the Blue Hens helmets. The white color was changed to metallic gray. As for all other elements — they remained untouched.
The color of the grille was changed once again in 1977. This time the designers decided to paint it into a bright shade of blue, which was different from the main color of the helmets, hence the overall image lacked visual harmony.
Another change of the Blue Hens helmets’ grille color was made in 1984. Finally, it was set in the same dark shade of blue, as the one, used for the helm. The new design made the helmets look stylish and the players — strong and confident.
The new color palette was adopted to the Blue Hens visual identity, including the uniforms and helmets, in 1999. The deep and dramatic shade of blue was replaced by a light and vivid one, with the yellow also brightened up. Hence, the main shade of the helmet was switched, as well as the palette of the grille.
In 2009 the blue is f the helmets became a bit darker, and now it is a shade in the middle from the original deep blue and the delightful blue from 1999. The massive grille of the helmets is set in the same blue and yellow palette.
The athletes of the Delaware Blue Hens program wear uniforms, set in the official color palette of the University of Delaware, royal blue and gold, with quite a generous addition of white, and black for the basketball uniform.
There are three versions of the uniform for the Blue Hens basketball teams: the home one features white t-shirts and shorts with wide blue stripes on the sides; the one, used by the players when they are away composed of royal blue shorts and t-shirts with the bright yellow stripes; and the alternate basketball uniform is set in solid black, with the blue stripes on the sides.
The football uniform of Delaware Blue Hens is super bright and intense, making the players very well visible on the field. The primary version is composed of royal blue jerseys with yellow logos and numbers and solid yellow pants; while the secondary uniform design features white jerseys with blue elements outlined in gold and the same solid yellow pants.
The University of Delaware provides all of its 21 athletic teams with all the needed facilities for training. The athletes have modern and comfortable arenas for each of the sports disciplines, including football, basketball, and baseball.
The home ground of the Delaware Blue Hens Football team is the Delaware Stadium, which opened its doors in 1952, and was renovated twice throughout the years. The capacity of the facility was changed several times too, and today it has 18,5 thousand seats.
The main basketball arena of the University of Delaware is the Bob Carpenter Center, built in 1992. Apart from being the home ground for the collegiate teams, the facility also hosts some NCAA and even NBA events. The Center has a capacity of 5 thousand seats.
Delaware Field House, which opened its doors in 1966 and was renovated in 2013, has all the indoor facilities for tennis players and track and field athletes of the Delaware Blue Hens program. The indoor stadium has a capacity of 4 thousand seats.
The name of the Blue Hens Mascot is YoUDee, which is a huge blue bird in a royal blue and gold uniform with the “UD” monogram on the jersey. A blue hen is a symbol of Delaware, but before it, it has become the symbol of the University’s athletic program. It happened in 1911, and only twenty years after the State of Delaware adopted it as its official emblem too.
DELAWARE BLUE
PANTONE: 2945 C
HEX COLOR: #00539F;
RGB: (0, 83, 159)
CMYK: (100, 38, 0, 15)
YELLOW
PANTONE: 115 C
HEX COLOR: #FFDD31;
RGB: (255, 221, 49)
CMYK: (0, 13, 81, 0)
DELAWARE YELLOW-GOLD
PANTONE: 109 C
HEX COLOR: #FFD200;
RGB: (255, 210, 0)
CMYK: (0, 9, 94, 0)