No other high school in the nation has such a unique mascot as Northampton High School. Of course, it pays homage to the industry that gave the town and the region its prosperity starting in the late 19th century.

The mascot’s story is inextricably interwoven with Northampton.

Apart from the dominating economic impact the cement industry had on this town, there was a practical aspect as well. The Universal Atlas Cement Company donated all the land upon which the current Northampton Area High School and most of the land Northampton Area Middle School were built.

Local historian Ed Pany has pointed out the early sports teams used empty Atlas cement bags to carry their equipment.

Northampton High School traces its origins to 1901 as Allen Township High School. It was later called Alliance High School, from 1903 to 1910, and finally Northampton High School, from 1910 to the present. Area was added to the name in the 1990s or early 2000s.

For its first decade, NHS graduating classes never exceeded 12 students. For that reason, among possibly others, NHS had no sports teams until 1911, when baseball was inaugurated. This was followed by boys’ basketball in 1914, girls’ basketball 1915 and an abbreviated football program in 1924.

During all these early years of sports, no mascot existed as can be currently determined. Press reports of games, almost always anonymous, relied on a retinue of reliable monikers used by many sports writers. There were common references to the “Northampton Nine” for baseball, the “cagers” for basketball and “Cement Towners” used generally. But what of the term “Konkrete Kids”?

What is fascinating is that this most iconic moniker first appeared in print not in reference to an NHS team, but rather to its older hometown counterpart, the Northampton Athletic Association. The NAA has always provided a program of youth sports for the borough of Northampton. In the early decades of the 20th century, the NAA also fielded a semi-pro baseball team that competed in a league with many other area towns.

The earliest reference in print to Konkrete Kids was in a June 5, 1921, article in The Morning Call. In this unattributed piece, the Konkrete Kids of the Northampton Athletic Association were defeated 7-0 in a baseball game against the Southwark Athletic Club of Catasauqua. Not until January 1922 does Konkrete Kids start to be used to refer to an NHS team - in this case, the boys’ basketball team. By late 1922, The Morning Call came to apply Konkrete Kids to all NHS teams.

Interestingly, the nickname was not immediately picked up by the hometown paper, The Cement News. This was the local newspaper covering all aspects of Northampton from 1903 to 1943. The earliest mention of Konkrete Kids in The Cement News was a Dec. 11, 1925, write-up of an NHS basketball victory over Stroudsburg.

But the growth of the Konkrete Kids didn’t stop in the 1920s.

The image of a Konkrete Kid was born from a need for a letterhead design for the newly formed athletic council. In 1961, coach Al Erdosy and print shop teacher Harry Reiff were unable to come up with a suitable design using the mascot. Erdosy turned to his high school classmate William Schwartz (NHS ’38). Schwartz was then an art teacher at Phillipsburg High.

He created a squarish-limbed figure of segmented cement blocks carrying a football. This design caught on and morphed into the current model. Often, the Konkrete Kid is set against a background of a capital “N” created by former NASD Athletic Director Mike Schneider.

Incidentally, it was also William Schwartz who gave the Konkrete Kid a human dimension. He made the first Kon- krete Kid costume out of cardboard. It resembled an oversized concrete block. That costume debuted during the 1969 football season. Several Konkrete Kid outfits have evolved from that initial model.

The colors sported by the Konkrete Kid are, of course, black and orange. The school colors of NHS did not arrive with the school’s birth. From 1901 to possibly 1910, there were no official colors. Each graduating class chose its own color scheme.

However, the Northampton Alumni Association - from 1904 onward, a large and influential body - voted to use the Class of 1910’s choices of black and orange as the official NHS colors.

Then, who is to be credited with inventing the moniker Konkrete Kids - a reporter, the crowd watching? Perhaps it is as simple as pairing the German spelling for concrete with a “k” and fashioning an alliterative phrase, including the visual repetition of the beginning letter.

The century-old Konkrete Kids moniker is a nod to the cement industry that sustained this area. They were the kids from the cement town who showed up with their equipment in cement bags.

A unique bag, a unique name for a team - the Konkrete Kids.