Few current RVHS students walking the halls today ever think about the beginning of their school district. Not many give a passing thought to the school colors or the name of the school. But before the doors to Royal Valley High School opened in 1971, all of those decisions had to be made. The students themselves voted on the name, colors and mascot during the previous year. According to Brian Murray who was a freshman during that first school year, “They couldn’t be Hoyt (black and gold) or Mayetta (red and white) colors.” The students chose purple and white.
Long-time RV teacher Ed Ryan recalls Kansas State University doing very well in sports at that time and believes that influenced the purple and white choice.
Next came the name. What were they going to call this new school? A few of the options were Jackson South or Pleasant View. Ryan said the sixth-grade class, taught by the superintendent’s wife, voted heavily in favor of Royal Valley, which eventually won the vote.
When USD 337 first opened Royal Valley High School in the fall of 1971, rival schools the Mayetta Indians and the Hoyt Cowboys came together to attend classes under one roof.
“We were upset at first,” reflected Cindy Curran Degand, Class of 1972. “It was sad,” she continued speaking about leaving Mayetta schools after all those years to go to Royal Valley for her senior year.
But the new RVHS building wasn’t ready for those students yet. They had to begin the school year in the old Mayetta High School until the new building was finished. Some classes met in a local church, some in a double-wide trailer and some in the actual school building in Mayetta. Once the current RVHS building was complete in the late fall/early winter of 1971, everyone moved to the Hoyt building and the old Mayetta High School housed the 7th and 8th grades.
“We thought it was a big school when it opened,” Murray commented. “There were 25 in my 8th grade class at Mayetta and 60 in my 9th grade class at RVHS.”
When talk of the merger first began, the town of Denison was included. Once Royal Valley became a reality and Denison school closed, the people on the border were allowed to choose which school district they wanted to attend. That created a jagged boundary line at the north end of the district.
Getting the students to intermingle without issues was on the minds of everyone. “Right off the bat the boys bonded through sports,” Ryan recalled, “but there weren’t girls sports then.” Ryan remembers it being harder for the girls to get to know each other than the boys.
“We were two, tiny, poor, 1A towns learning how to operate as a district,” recalled former USD 337 superintendent John Rundle. “Fred Staker put it on a firm foundation and let it flourish.”
Staker was the USD 337 superintendent from July 1976 to June of 1992.
“It was mostly adults who resisted the merger,” Staker recalled. “It bothered me that whenever we introduced a student during Homecoming, we said she was from Hoyt or he was from Mayetta. I wanted everyone to be from Royal Valley. There were people who kept track of how many basketball starters were from each town,” Staker remembered incredulously.
That first year, football was played on the football field in Mayetta. That field had no bleachers. Long-time RVHS teacher and administrator Bonnie Williams remembered driving her pickup to the field on football Fridays, leaving it there and catching a ride back to RVHS with another teacher. That reserved a spot for Williams and her husband Joe to sit in their lawn chairs in the bed of the pickup and watch the game.
When football moved to Hoyt, the field was behind the elementary school and ran north and south.
“It wasn’t level,” explained Ryan. “There were also baseball and softball fields there. Dale Hainline, a junior, moved a lot of dirt to turn that football field to its east/west current location. Coleman Eigenmann did a lot of work, too.”
Many long-time Jackson County residents remember the Mayetta fire in March 1977.
“I heard sirens and stepped outside the district office to see what was happening,” Staker recalled. “I looked to the southeast and saw smoke. I told Nancy (DeKeyser) I was going to check on the school and would be back soon.”
When he drove the short distance to the Mayetta school, he saw that the school was on fire. The junior high was a total loss, along with everything in it. Luckily, no lives were lost.
“From then on, it was a battle,” Staker recalled. “The building that burned was used for 7-8 grades. We finished out the year with the cooks fixing sack lunches for the students. The 7-8 grades met in the basement of the Catholic Church. Our insurance wasn’t replacement value, so we only received $400,000 to rebuild. We brought in mobile units from the Highland School District to use. We were on our own. We didn’t have FEMA or the state or other districts giving us aid.”
At the time of the fire, Royal Valley was the 3rd poorest district in the state of Kansas behind Junction City and Galena. The district passed a bond issue to build locker rooms, a gym, a commons and a kitchen.
“That’s why we built a small gym. It’s all we could afford,” Staker explained.
Royal Valley High School competed in activities and athletics as part of the Jeff County League. Other schools in that league were Perry-Lecompton, Jefferson West, Valley Falls, Oskaloosa, McLouth, Jefferson County North and Pleasant Ridge.
Staker laughed, “We got kicked out of the league because we (RV, Perry-Lecompton and Jeff West) were too big! Royal Valley then went to the Big 7 League.
In the spring of 1993, Royal Valley made its final consolidation move. Up until that time, Hoyt and Mayetta had kept their own elementary schools.
“We gathered trailers and trucks on the last day of school in May 1993, and everyone loaded them,” explained John Rundle. “We hauled stuff between the two buildings until everything was moved.”
In the fall of 1993, grades Kindergarten through 5th were in Hoyt at Royal Valley Elementary School and grades 6-8 were at Mayetta at Royal Valley Middle School. In the fall of 1994, the fifth grade was moved to Mayetta.
“It was all about boundaries,” Rundle continued. “We would have too many kids from one grade living north of the boundary or south of the boundary, and the class sizes were off balance. This move made sense.”
Another change that came with the final consolidation was the shuttle bus system. “The Impact Aid committee initiated the shuttle bus system when we changed to RVES and RVMS,” recounted Rundle, who sat on that committee at the time. Students who stay after school for athletic practice or tutoring could ride a bus home and not need to wait on a parent to come get them. Thanks to the Impact Aid committee, more students now have the chance to participate in sports and activities.
Over the years the district has made many changes to the facilities, besides the merger of buildings. “Alan Hegeman was a champion to the Board of Education for building a track,” Staker said. “Once we built it, our track program became a tradition. We hosted Regional track and people wanted to come to our meets because we had a good reputation. We also fed people well!”
Every fall RVHS put on a musical and in 1983 RVHS added wrestling as a sport, with no gym space for the wrestlers to practice. The musical and wrestling co-existed in the lunch commons during the month of November. “Considering the space we had to work with, it (the musical) was a fantastic experience that everyone looked forward to,” exclaimed Staker.
Another tradition that RVHS was known for was the band. “We had an excellent band director in Mrs. Baker,” Staker continued. “Everyone took pride in the band. It was a tradition we really hung our hat on, and later Mr. Nottingham continued it.”
Staker looks back on his years at Royal Valley with great fondness. “Where else can you sit and watch a football game in rural Kansas, see the Capitol lights in the distance and have a multi-cultural school? My heart is still in Royal Valley.”
If you have stories to share from your years at RVHS, please share them on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/RoyalValleyUSD337) or email williamsonb@rv337.org and include your name and graduation year.