MCC's other Wolf Pack, decked out for the season

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Here's a Metropolitan Community College factoid you might not know, especially if you don’t work or take classes at the Maple Woods campus.

Yes, our mascot, the sports teams, students and employees are all MCC Wolves. But there's an entirely other wolf pack whose habitat is the roof of a building at Maple Woods, in Kansas City's Northland. These days, the wolves are sporting holiday gear.

The roof we’re talking about, accessible to MCC Wolves and other bipeds, covers the Campus Center, home to the Arbor Room meeting space (CC 110). With 13 sheet-metal wolf silhouettes “roaming” native grasses, the Maple Woods Campus Center may one day be famous as the place to find wolves in the sky.

The creatures came to Maple Woods (as permanent residents) circa 2022-23, says Kim Greene, director of campus operations, and were made by “the Woods’ ” resourceful facilities team and landscape coordinator Matt Knopf-Amelung. But it was only this Halloween that the campus introduced some costuming to the pack. Jenny Wilkerson in the MW president’s office “has been a great unofficial wolf stylist,” Greene says.

Now we’re in the holidays (Santa toppers and festive scarves for the wolves), and the campus is thinking about how fashionable the beasts could be for other occasions.

Also, as you might guess, the high-style wolves (so far all nameless) are becoming a favorite subject for photos including selfies. On Christmas Eve, perhaps Mr. Claus or Rudolph will snap a couple as their sleigh glides over the MCC-Maple Woods campus and our city wolves.