The color of the wrestling mats at the school's Lower Northeast Philadelphia campus - at 5:50 in the morning.
"It's what you gotta do to be the champions," said junior 152-pounder Kevin Mallon, who along with the other members of the North Catholic wrestling team, report to the school before 6 a.m. for a morning practice. "You get a little tired by the time you're done the second practice (in the afternoon), but it's definitely worth it."
This is the first year North is holding before-school practices and it's all in an effort to regain a title it lost last season.
Catholic League champions was something the Falcons were getting used to being called in the wrestling world - until last year.
La Salle, after having lost to North in the previous three championship matches, finally broke through and dethroned the Falcons, ending their four-year reign.
It's a feeling none of the Falcons want to have again.
"That day, that night, was probably one of the worst nights of my life," said North 285-pounder Eric French. "That week, we killed ourselves. We did everything we could to prepare for that match. We thought we were gonna win it."
But a championship is tough to win when four of your top wrestlers were out for the season - including Mallon with a dislocated shoulder - and four others missed time because of injuries - including French with an ankle injury.
Still, the fact that North was able to reach the championship last season despite all the injuries is impressive. And this year, several of those injured wrestlers are back, which will make the Falcons even more dangerous this time around.
"When I got hurt and couldn't wrestle, I was just always thinking what it would be like if I was out there," said Mallon, who had two steel anchors inserted into his left shoulder during orthopedic surgery. "My team did the best they could, but I couldn't really take it. It was a loss not being able to be out there."
French and Mallon, who went 40-9 in his freshman year, headline a talented batch of returning wrestlers for the Falcons.
Joining them are Mike McCall (103 pounds), Howard McCune (125), Matt Dugan (140) and Chris James (215). But the competition for starting spots is never ending.
"In our room, it's become sort of like a survival of the fittest," said ninth-year coach Jim Savage. "Kids that stay, flourish. The kids that don't want to give their all, they go on to do other things. We're not planning on losing because we're not prepared or not training."
A lot of the Falcons' success has to be credited to its home-mat advantage.
When visiting teams enter "The Pit," it's like nothing they've ever seen. And it's not because it's the most state-of-the-art facility around.
Picture an old, wooden gym. The bleachers aren't the metal-plastic concoction that you push back into the wall after a game, but the wooden type that are simply stacked on top of each other. If the place is empty and you whisper from one end of the gym, someone standing on the other side will be sure to fully understand what you said. It's that tight-knit.
But if it's full, you can barely hear yourself think, let alone talk to the person sitting right next to you.
It's an intimidating place, to say the least.
"The atmosphere is crazy," French said. "It's probably one of the best experiences when you wrestle in there. You can't even hear what the coaches are telling you to do. You just go on instinct and what we learned throughout the year."
Perhaps the reason why North lost the Catholic League championship last season was because it was at La Salle (where the Falcons also fell to the Explorers during the regular season).
But they don't believe the location of any match dictates whether they will win or lose. They are so confident in their abilities that they fully believe the Catholic League title is theirs - and so is a shot at states.
But one step at time. First thing's first. And that requires waking up between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. to get to the school in time for the morning practice.
"We're aiming to beat La Salle, we're aiming to win the Catholic League, we're aiming at states this year," Mallon said. We're working our butts off for that."