Introducing the Louisville Thunder

Introducing the Louisville Thunder

Not long after Kirkdale introduced the Indiana Victors, Vince Forsyth revealed his own Louisville Thunder. 

While Forsyth originally was the head of a Cincinnati bid, he is originally from Charleston, Indiana just north of Louisville. He went to university in Louisville and eventually worked with Kirkdale in Indianapolis before he went to the Cincinnati team for the past couple of years. He was worried Louisville was going to be too small, but when the league was all for the move Forsyth couldn’t be more excited.  As a kid, he was able to see the Kentucky Derby once and he loved the show and the sound of the horses as they raced. Thunder. That was the sound that he connected to the horses. He had a horse on a family farm that he had named “Lucky Thunder”. He did have dreams of one-day racing in the derby but they were short-lived, but he loved his horse. Lucky would become the inspiration for the name of the Louisville football team. The logo and team mascot would become Lucky Thunder himself. The horse’s head outlined in gold is the main logo with lightning bolts becoming other elements on the wordmark. Gold was the original colour to symbolize the thunderstorm and lightning that the name comes from, while the deep red symbolizes the roses of the Derby.  

The jerseys are red with lightning bolt striping on the shoulders, pants and helmet. The team has both gold and white pants which they will likely mix and match throughout the season. The helmet will feature the silhouette of Lucky Thunder and the bolt on top. 

​The name for the team was not suggested by anyone, I certainly had a tougher time coming up with a name I loved for Louisville. Colonels was the most suggested, but I never loved it and felt it was too obvious and has been used before. There were some great civil war-related names that I considered, but with Indy, I wanted to go a different direction. Thunder came from that and I fell for it instantly. Love the red-gold colour scheme, and wanted to do something like that, DireBear had suggested the colours scheme for Indy, but I liked it more for this team. Again thanks for the help Darknes and Scratch on the designing process! 

1958-Present