The pride of an intramural championship shirt can follow someone throughout his or her college career. However, some people get to hold on to that pride decades after they’re done with school.

Patrick Donovan, an ISU alumnus, works for CC Creations, Ltd., the company that will be printing the ISU intramural championship shirts for the next three years.

“To print the shirts some 25 years later is pretty cool,” Donovan said. “It’s like the whole thing has come full circle.”

In his time at Iowa State, from 1979-1984, Donovan played, officiated and supervised intramural sports while also serving on the advisory board.

“You could say I touched every aspect of campus recreation,” Donovan said.

As a champion in basketball and curling, Donovan said he also knows the gratification of winning a shirt.

“The shirt is something you have to earn; you can’t buy it,” Donovan said. “In my day, people would kill for a shirt.”

CC Creations, Ltd. is a company, based in Texas, that specializes in printing for universities.

It last won the bid for ISU intramural shirts about 10 years ago, but it reclaimed the rights with a winning bid this year.

Companies that want to provide the printing for intramural shirts have to go through a bid process that occurs every three years. Iowa State’s intramural program usually attracts a large amount of attention and is placed highly, along with schools like Michigan, Texas, Texas A&M and Alabama. This attention has allowed the printing cost to stay at about $5 per shirt.

Because of the large number of intramural championship shirts Iowa State needs to print — about 180 dozen — printing companies from all over the country line up to place their bids — said Garry Greenlee, intramural coordinator and associate director of recreational services.

The companies must be licensed through the university in order to print ISU logos, as well as adhere to the shirt requirements laid out for them.

“Things like color, size, weight and cotton percentage are just some of the requirements the companies have to meet,” Greenlee said.

Previous methods of finding the right design included an intramural T-shirt design contest.

Contestants would submit their ideas and would win the shirt they designed just like they had won a sport. However, low entry numbers eventually saw the idea come to an end.

The tentative colors for the new shirts are stone blue, Vegas gold, cardinal, gold, kelly green and sports gray. While the colors and design change every year, there is one part of the champion shirt that has been consistent.

“We always keep ‘Just For The Fun Of It’,” Greenlee said. “That one stays.”