Strangest High School Team Mascots

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s face it, most high school teams have boring names taken from major league sports. There are any number of eagles or lions or tigers or bears, oh my… but some schools have more imagination. I stumbled into a list of Oregon school names and found such wonders as:

Aardvarks
Cheesemakers
Black Tornado
Gophers
Honkers (two of them!)
Locomotive
Pelicans
Seagulls
Techmen
White Buffalo

It’s gotta be tough to come up with a cheer for the cheesemakers (Beat the whey out of them?)

Any goodies where you live?

2

I grew up in Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas. I attended Mesquite High School, “Home of the Fightin’ Skeeters!” Our mascot was, yes, a mosquito, which I’m sure struck fear in the hearts and minds of our opponents. Our most relevant cheer was predictably “Sting 'em Skeeters!”

Of course, every school we played in football or basketball always displayed a banner that said “What’s a Skeeter??!!?”, or even more original “Swat the Skeeters!” Yeah, like that was a belly-laugh the first 1000 times we saw it.

3

I went to an all girls high school. Our school mascot was…

You guessed it…

A beaver.

Pun NOT intended by pristine old ladies who founded the school 100 years ago, of course.

Also, see link to Cecil column:
Go Geoducks, Go!

4

My entries:

Locally, there’s 3 high schools, With team names “vikings” “big reds” and… “Quakers”. Yep, pacifists.

But, personally, for sheer oddity, I like my old alma mater - we were the “Seaholm” (name of the school) Maples. Yesssirreee. Trees. Now there’s an image for ya. Our mascot out on the field was “Mickey the Mapleleaf” we lost a lot.

5

Try the Chicago area schools.

My school’s teams (Loyola Academy) were the Ramblers. No we had no clue what it meant either. Note that Loyola University of Chicago, in all of it’s athletic web pages, never tries to explain what a Rambler actually is, though they do use a fairly striking wolf logo (the Academy, on the other hand, used a Viking logo. Go figure.)

New Trier: The Trevians

Mt. Carmel: The Caravan (if they didn’t keep rolling over opponents in football it would be laughable. As it is, it’s painful).

6

Near South Bend Indiana there’s a town called Mishawaka.

Boys’ high school teams–The Cavemen
Girls’ high school teams–The Lady Cavemen

:smiley:

7

Try the Chicago area schools.

My school’s teams (Loyola Academy) were the Ramblers. No we had no clue what it meant either. Note that Loyola University of Chicago, in all of it’s athletic web pages, never tries to explain what a Rambler actually is, though they do use a fairly striking wolf logo (the Academy, on the other hand, used a Viking logo. Go figure.)

New Trier: The Trevians

Mt. Carmel: The Caravan (if they didn’t keep rolling over opponents in football it would be laughable. As it is, it’s painful).

Damn!

I did find one explanation for “Ramblers” on the Loyola University of Chicago web page, but I think it’s fake, myself. Note that the reason for sharing nicknames betwen the college and the high school is the they shared facilities until 1956, when the high school moved to a new campus in Wilmette.

"As the only collegiate program with the nickname “Ramblers” for its teams, the question is often asked as to why that name was picked. The origin goes back to the days when football was king at Loyola University Chicago.

Previous to the 1920s, all athletic teams were merely assigned the school colors instead of a nickname. All Loyola teams were known as the “Maroon and Gold.”

In 1925, the football coach, along with the student newspaper, conducted a contest to name the football team. The winning entry was “Grandees”, tying into the Spanish origins of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, the name “Grandees” did not catch on in the following months.

In 1926, a more informal but much more binding process finally gave Loyola’s teams their nickname - “Ramblers”. That year, the football team traveled so extensively across the United States, “rambling from state to state”, that the media dubbed Loyola as the Ramblers.

Despite dropping football as a varsity sport in 1930, the nickname “Ramblers” is still proudly carried by today’s athletic teams at Loyola University Chicago."
Copyright © 2000
Loyola University Chicago

8

There’s a town in Arkansas that I have passed through on numerous occasions. It’s called Cave City and they grow the best watermelon in the world there. Anyway, their mascot is the Cavemen. Oh, well, what else are you going to call a team from Cave City?

Now this isn’t a high school but there is a college in Kansas (I think, it’s Kansas) and they are the Icabods or something like that. (Oh someone who knows please tell this story right.) Anyway, I saw them play at a tournament and they had this guy wearing an Icabod head. Icabod is a man’s name you see so basically he was dressed up as a man with a giant head. Well, I thought it odd.

9

I’m in central Texas, and we’ve got the Austin High ‘Maroons’, the Taylor Ducks (guess that’s nothing compared to ‘honkers’), and the Hutto Hippos.

Oh yeah, and the Anderson Trojans.

10

Let us not forget the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs

11

Wow! Thanks, folks. By way of amplification, both my parents graduated from Hood River High School in Oregon, whose teams were called the Blue Dragons. Great graphics. Unfortunately, they merged with a nearby high school and took the other high school’s mascot, your basic “Tuffy the Eagle” as used by probably 100s of schools nationwide.

Here in Oregon, of course, the two largest colleges are the Ducks and the Beavers, both perpetual doormats for the PAC-10 conference for most of my life, though in the last few years have done remarkably well.

Also, the Cheesemakers are from the costal town of Tillamook, known in the region at least for the large cheese manufacturing complex producing the Tillamook brands.

Oh, and I attended Willamette University in Salem, OR, whose teams were the Bearcats, originally named for the Stutz automobile of the 20s. Now that Chrysler is set to fade out the Plymouth marque and GM says goodbye to Oldsmobile, perhaps other teams will pick up their names?

12

How about the fighting “Yellow Jackets!” Ewwwwww…scary! :wink: The mascot dressed up in a big bee costume with a large stinger sticking out of the back. It was hysterical looking.

13

Can’t believe no one yet has come forth with the best mascot name of all time, the Poca (WV) Dots! Yes, the POCA DOTS!

If you want to see a nice discussion of mascots (HS and college) as well as links to explanations of some of them, check out http://www.baylor.edu/~Larry_Frazier/mascot.htm for more. This guy TRULY has too much time on his hands!

14

By any chance, would they be from Tillamook, Oregon?

LaurAnge, you beat me to it, and I was a Geoduck.

My high school teams were the Lakes High School Lancers (the logo was a knight on horseback with a lance). When my aunt heard that name she said it sounded like we were getting ready to take care of a boil.

15

My high school, in Wyoming, has a mascot called the “plainsmen”. It is essentially a guy that looks like Buffalo Bill. Very unique, very lame.

16

There’s a highschool in Vanderhoof BC whose teams are called the Vikings (pretty normal), except their girls’ teams, who are called the Vi-queens.

17

In addition to the Cave City Cavemen, mentioned by SoMoMom, Arkansas also has the Deer Antlers (Deer being a tiny community in the wilds of Newton County, to the southwest of Jasper), the Winslow Squirrels, and the West Memphis Chicks (Chicks in this case being a shortened version of “Chickasaws”, an Indian tribe indigenous to the Mississippi River area around Memphis; “Chicks” has slso been used as the name of minor league baseball franchises in Memphis.

18

My high school mascot: The Flames
My college mascot: The Violets

Very intimidating, both of them. The biggest danger they present is that players from opposing teams might fall down and injure themselves while laughing.

19

Grand Island HS, Grand Island, Nebraska - the Islanders. Mascot isn’t only a tree, but a palm tree.

Ord, Nebraska - the Ord HS Chanticleers. A fine thing, to have your mascot be a chicken.

20

New Berlin, IL, calls their high school teams the Pretzels.
And the Centralia, IL team is the Orphans.