History

The Lava Dunes Academy

Rockbeach is the only beach in New Jersey made entirely of black lava rock. Nobody knows how or why. Voyagers would see a black hole in the moonlight and take it for the entrance to a cape, and by the time they realized it was rock breaking up the sand it was too late to change course. The town, under Mayor Siddy Walker, built a house with a light and a mirror inside to show ships the rocks - by some accounts the first lighthouse there ever was, which is where the logo comes from. The mayor wanted the engineers to teach others how to run the house, and that first academy became the university. It was called Lava Dunes until 1927.

Fuchsia and green, by accident

Jeff Hive, athletic director 1898 to 1932. Thirty-four years in the chair, and nobody has held it as long since.

In 1901 he walked into the local clothmaker needing uniforms for a game two days away, and came out with fuchsia and green because they were the only bolts in the shop. Those were the school colors for the next thirty-five years.

Steve Alexander draws the mark

STEVE ALEXANDER DREW THE 1927 MARK, AND HE WAS A BASKETBALL STAR BEFORE HE WAS AN ARTIST.

He was famous here for playing, and the school asked him to draw the new mark when Lava Dunes became Rockbeach University. He did it, and then he went and had the other career.

HE BECAME A CARTOONIST FOR THE OSPREY POST. Widely loved, for a long time, until he passed.

Black and white

Black and white since 1936.

AND THEN THERE IS ROCKBEACH BLUE, WHICH IS A THIRD COLOR AND NOBODY PLANNED IT. Football wanted to recruit better players, and recruits kept saying the same thing: two colors is not a uniform program, it is a dress code. The survey came back asking for a third color and a third jersey. So the department picked one, and it became Rockbeach Blue.

IT WORKED, WHICH IS WHY IT STAYED. But it was added for seventeen-year-olds looking at jerseys, not for any reason connected to this place.

AND EVERYBODY WANTS THE FUCHSIA AND GREEN BACK. Not instead of the blue - instead of the black and white. The throwback is the most requested thing the shop does not sell.

The dorms

A commuter school until 1971, when president Peter Pike III began building dormitories. The dorms are now among the best in the state.

Four nicknames

ROCKBEACH HAS CHANGED ITS NICKNAME FOUR TIMES.

1849 to 1927 - THE SANDYS. From the founding, when the school was still the Lava Dunes Academy.

1927 - THE LAVA MONSTERS. The year the school stopped being Lava Dunes and became Rockbeach University, somebody finally pointed out that there is no sand here. It is a black lava rock beach. The Sandys made no sense and never had. The teams took the lava with them from the old school name.

1976 - THE BREAKERS. Students voted. Lava Monsters had gone from fearsome to silly somewhere in the intervening fifty years, and a wave breaking on the rock was both accurate and hard to laugh at.

1990 - THE WHITECAPS. Basketball got hot and made a run of deep tournaments. The coach used to say: "We are a wave coming at you. But not a nice one. We are the nastiest whitecap you have ever seen and we are going to drown you in our defense." It was a little much. But the alumni who had never forgiven the 1976 vote had their opening, and Whitecaps carried.

AND NOW - THE MERMAIDS, who would be the fifth.

Through all four, the mascot never changed. Sandy the rock has outlived every name.

The badge nobody was meant to see

THE 1994 MARK HAD A VERSION NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO SEE.

The badge that shipped hides a mermaid tail in the lava rock - two of the tips are a fluke, scaled, drawn low and leaning so the outcrop reads first. In the proposed version the scales were FUCHSIA, one of the two original colors from 1901, and that made the tail findable instead of hidden.

HERITAGE GARDNER WAS CHAIR OF THE BOARD AND SHE KILLED IT. Not the badge - the color. She hated the idea of mermaids, and fuchsia scales made the mermaid the point of the mark rather than a thing buried in it. The tail survived because she could not see it once it was black.

The mermaid question

The teams are the Whitecaps and the mascot is a giant rock, and both of those still stand. But the Mermaids movement is not dead - it is growing, and the history is on its side.

It surfaced when the basketball team wanted the nickname - but it did not start there. A mermaid tail has been hidden on the official logo TWICE - in the curl of the breaker in 1976, and again in the lava rock of the 1994 mark, a nod to the sirens. Eighteen years apart, by different hands, and most people have never noticed either one. It was approved for one night, sold out the arena, and cleared every piece of mermaid merchandise in The Cove. A push to move all women's sports across fell short on public opinion at the time. Since then the women's basketball team becomes the Mermaids once a year, the student section has a Mermaids block who turn up in costume, and The Siren - the third-down experience when Rockbeach is on defense - is led by them. The base wanting it permanent keeps growing and the football team is now openly on board.

THE ARGUMENT THAT IS WINNING IS NOT ABOUT MERMAIDS. It is that this school has changed its nickname four times already, so the people defending tradition are defending a name from 1990. And the movement wants the colors back to fuchsia and green - the ORIGINAL colors, from 1901 - which they point out are natural mermaid colors.