Louie’s look isn’t changing.

Gotcha, Lakers.

We had a little fun, but don’t worry — Louie isn’t getting a makeover anytime soon. The mascot you know and love is here to stay.

But Louie has changed a lot over the years... from the legendary "Great Laker" in a raincoat to an early version of Louie with a giant foam head, our favorite Laker has had quite the evolution. Take a look back at how Louie has changed through the decades.

Grand Valley's nickname “Lakers” was selected in 1965, but it was a while before any mascot would exist. The first iteration of Louie, “The Great Laker,” was born in 1977 and was played by Dan Castle ’80, followed by Paul Hagan and Ron Gates '85.

After Gates, the record of who served as the Great Laker is largely incomplete. Archive searches indicate that the Great Laker costume changed to include a large paper mache head around 1986 and stayed relatively the same until the arrival of athletic director Tim Selgo in 1996.

Becoming Louie

While some mascots are the results of contests or marketing studies, Louie was born from the imagination of GVSU's former athletic director, Tim Selgo, while sitting in a car traveling to Saginaw just months after he started at the university.

“I was sitting in the car with Odie (Rob Odejewski, the late assistant athletic director for marketing and promotions) on the way to a GLIAC softball tournament in Saginaw in 1996, talking about what we wanted to do to promote athletics more, and we’d been talking about a mascot,” Selgo said. “We knew it had to start with the same letter. So I said, ‘What about Larry the Laker?’ and Odie said, ‘No, that sounds ridiculous,’ and I said, ‘OK, what about Louie?’ And he liked it, and that was that. We had Louie the Laker.”