New CHSL.com to feature scores, standings and awards; 93-year-old league will retain revamped 'coat of arms' logo

DETROIT — Catholic High School League athletics will have a new look next school year.

The Archdiocese of Detroit-sponsored sports conference, established in 1926 and the oldest league in the state, will continue to offer Christ-centered athletics through high schools across Metro Detroit, but now players, coaches, parents and fans will have a new place to access need-to-know information.

A revamped CHSL.com, unveiled May 31, offers a more comprehensive look at the 27-school conference with scores, standings, schedules and featured articles about teams and athletes around the league.

“We’re very excited about how the new website came out,” said Vic Michaels, director of the Catholic High School League and the Archdiocese of Detroit's Department of Health, Athletics and Safety. “It will allow us to have a place for scores, schedules, standings, all-conference and all-Catholic teams in one place. It will allow a function for coaches, fans and parents to input scores and keep it up to date. We expect it to be one of the best league websites in the state.”

The new mobile-friendly website comes with a new CHSL logo, featuring a cross among the four-letter logo and the year 1926, when the league was established.

The new logo will complement the Catholic League’s longstanding seal, which incorporates the Archdiocese of Detroit's coat of arms. The seal, which also received an update, has been in use for as long as Michaels remembers.

“We worked in collaboration with the Communications Department (of the Archdiocese of Detroit) and felt a secondary logo would be necessary,” Michaels said. “We’ve had the logo with the AOD crest forever, but with the new website, we wanted to create a secondary logo when we felt the crest wouldn’t work.”

Michaels said the CHSL team looked at hundreds of fonts and wanted to keep the CHSL lettering — what most fans easily recognize when discussing the Catholic League — along with a symbol of faith and a callback to the league’s history.

“It was important to keep our identity of being established in 1926 in the secondary logo and some identity of our Catholic faith with the cross in the middle,” Michaels said.

In the spirit of keeping the league’s tradition alive, the new website allows fans to look up past award winners and champions dating back to the league’s founding.

With the rebranding, CHSL fans will still see both the new CHSL logo and the traditional archdiocesan coat of arms logo on Catholic League apparel and at Catholic League events.

“The traditional logo will still be on the letterheads and where the AOD crest would normally go,” Michaels said. “Our medals and awards will still feature the traditional archdiocesan crest where it fits best, usually on the sleeve of a shirt or the left chest. And people will see the new CHSL logo on banners for championship events and the front of shirts. We’re really happy with the rebrand as we go forward.”