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A History of the Windsor Spitfires
The Windsor Spitfires are among the oldest teams operating in the
Ontario Hockey League. The team has been thrilling hockey fans in
Windsor and Essex County with its exciting brand of Junior hockey
for over 35 years.
The original Windsor Spitfires played in the Ontario Hockey
Association from 1945-1953. After a 17 year hiatus from junior
hockey, the modern-day Spitfires began operations in 1971, playing
four years in the Southern Ontario Junior A Hockey League. In 1975
the team was granted entry as an expansion franchise in the Ontario
Major Junior Hockey League (OMJHL), which later became known as
the Ontario Hockey League (OHL).
Peter Karmanos (founder and CEO of Compuware) bought the team in
1984 and renamed it the Windsor Compuware Spitfires. The
Compuware Spitfires played in the 1988 Memorial Cup in Chicoutimi,
Quebec, losing the championship game to the Medicine Hat Tigers.
When Karmanos sold the team to Steve Riolo after the 1988–89
season, the team reverted back to the Windsor Spitfires name and
adopted a new logo and new colours.
In their modern-day history as a junior hockey team, the Windsor
Spitfires have had five different logos and a variety of colours and
uniforms. The logo of the original OMJHL Spitfires in 1975 team was
a red and blue circle surrounding a white maple leaf with the scripted
word "Spitfires" across the crest. Team colours were red, white and
blue.
When known as the Compuware Spitfires, the team wore brown and
orange, with a circular logo containing the word "Compuware"
surrounding an orange WWII Spitfire aircraft.
In 1989, the Spitfires introduced the current logo with its traditional
red, white and blue as the official colours. The team briefly used a
third jersey in 2002 with a white, red and green colour scheme and a
logo featuring an animated aircraft flying in front of the Ambassador
Bridge.
In 2006, the team re-introduced a “vintage” third jersey in cream,
white and blue, similar to the one worn by the original Spitfires
from 1945 to 1953. The throw-back jersey featured a blue letter
“W” behind the word “Spitfires”. The team continues to wear this
as a third jersey at selected home and away games.
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