The Youngsters reveling in Spirit Gear (among other things)

There are so many great things about NOT being a Plebe that it’s hard to categorize or quantify them. But one of the little, yet important, joys is the option to wear “spirit gear” in the evening.

Plebes are restricted to official PT gear, but everyone else can wear “spirit gear” – essentially anything emblazoned with Navy, USNA or Marine Corps.

While the Mids are usually buried in t-shirts, last year my Mid was looking for other options for shorts and sweatpants beyond the normal stuff. Our family likes to make things and in this case, we made custom gear. The Mid wanted cargo pants, so we set about figuring out a way to make cargo shorts that would pass the “spirit gear” standard.

Here’s what we came up with:

Every company has different rules, but he’s worn these on deck and even in Drydock, so seems like they’re pretty safe. As for the sweatpants, we took a similar approach (but didn’t get as good a picture):

I found the ship patches on eBay (seriously, can’t you find just about anything there?) and just sewed them on basic cargo pants and sweatpants. Boom! Custom spirit gear.

We have more patches – more than my Mid will use, I suspect – so if you’re interested in patches or in getting your Mid some custom spirit gear, just drop me a line and we’ll see how we can help.

What are your “success” stories with spirit gear?