Go East Bay Indians!
Hasn’t fallen prey to the PC’ers yet.
The Rebels. Mascot was Johnny Reb. School flag was the confederate battle flag. They’ve probably been changed to something else since I graduated, since this was almost 20 years ago.
My high school was (is) the Crusaders, and our mascot was “George”, a 8 foot tall statue of an armored knight with the school coat of arms on his surcoat.
Luckily, my school’s a Catholic school and would happily tell the PC/muslim crowd to go straight to hell if they suggested we change our mascot of 40+ years.
When I was in junior high, we were the Trojans. My ninth-grade year book (ninth-grade is still junior high in Sand Springs) was called “Trojan Explosion”.
We were the Peglegs. Kind of appropriate given how bad we were at everything.
The Knights -
which can be a useful mascot. “Knight” rhymes with a lot of things (fight, might, brite, sight, fright, light, …) and we probably heard them all over the years. Also, when it comes to naming things and events, it is easy to make bad puns with the word “Knight.” So there were things like “Good Knight,” “Knight Time,” “Tales of 1001 Knights,” much better than one of the rival schools whose mascot was a wooden statue.
Lo, behold the awesome power of The Dardanelle Sand Lizards!.
Hamilton West Hornets. Unfortunately, they went with an orange-and-black color scheme, instead of the more realistic and infintely better-looking yellow-and-black. And all of our sports teams pretty much sucked, too.
In college, we were the RPI Engineers. Geeky, yes, but we were proud of our geekiness. I can imagine the writers and editors at Sports Illustrated looking at each other and asking, “the Engineers won the NCAA? WTF?”
Unfortunately, someone decided that the old alma mater needed a better image, so it’s now the Rensselaer Redhawks. Not, “RPI,” but, “Rensselaer,” which a goodly number of people (including some students there) can’t pronounce. And, “Redhawks,” which are a dime a dozen, not, “Engineers,” which is not exactly a common mascot.
Just to confuse the issue, when we were the Engineers, the actual mascot that skated around on the ice was a red and white (school colors) bee. Not entirely sure why, although the prevailing story had something to do with the old saw about it being aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly.
(Texarkana) Arkansas High Razorbacks.
New Philadelphia, yes? We went down there for a band competition once and we thought that was just the funniest thing.
In high school, we were the Falcons. My middle school mascots were the… wait for it… Argonauts!
–Cliffy
Did you go to Sand Springs High School? Were they still the “Sandites”?
:snicker:
What? WHAT? When the hell did that happen?
I liked being the Engineers, mostly because it was so delightfully weird. You can’t draw an “engineer” for a mascot, so we ended up with that silly ice-skating hockey puck in a hardhat. And the aforementioned bee. It was the quirkiness of the 'Tute distilled down to its goofy-assed essence.
Redhawks? Feh.
Yes, I realize that I’m admitting that I haven’t been to a hockey game in quite some time.
The Highclimbers. The Shelton High School Highclimbers. I lived in a logging town. The Grays Harbor Community College mascot is Charlie the Choke-Setter.
We were the Dodge City Red Demons, complete with fundie hijinx. One nut was arrested while trying to cover the one on the water tower with spray paint. Then he wrote rambling incoherent “God is going to kill you all” letters to the local paper from jail. Good times!
The original mascot was the Sou’wester (we were in Southwest KS), and I’m not sure why or when it was changed. Even after the change, we mostly went with cowboy themes for band and drill team uniforms, to play up the “Gunsmoke” thing, I guess. To my knowledge, they remain the Red Demons.
Sometime in the last 5-10 years. My Senior year ('88-'89) was when they started instituting the RPI -> Rensselaer transition, replacing virtually every sign on campus in the space of a couple of months. It wasn’t just the name change; if it was to appear on signs, letterhead, etc. it was to be underlined with this gray bar. It all just seemed so ridiculous; we took to calling the school, “Rensselaerwithagraybar.” I did notice that, despite the mandate from on high, the hockey jerseys continued to use the RPI, “bullet,” for many years after the changeover.
The Redhawk thing was more recent, but I don’t remember precisely when. I just remember thinking it was pretty stupid. Could you imagine Purdue changing their mascot from the Boilermakers to…I don’t know…the Blackbirds? It just doesn’t work.
It seems that Krinthis and I went to the same high school, if it was Stuyvesant High School in NYC. 
I’d just like to elaborate and note that an actual mascot existed, Pegleg Pete. A little guy with a stumpy leg and a tricorn hat. He’s a little more threatening if you know that Peter Stuyvesant was a right bastard who pretty much soaked the soil of New York with the blood of his enemies.
Well, for my freshman year the school I went to were the Ridgefield (CT) Tigers. Pretty basic; orange & black the school colors.
When we moved out here to Indiana, I became a Noblesville Miller. That’s right, a MILLER. Our mascot looks a lot like Purdue Pete from Purdue University and the school colors are black & gold - but the school song is sung to the same tune as the IU fight song. Rumor has it that they didn’t want to offend anyone who was a supporter of either school.
Background story on the whole Miller thing is here .
B, B, B-R-E-A
(clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
K, K, K-E-R-S
(clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)
B-R-E-A
(clap-clap-clap)
K-E-R-S
(clap-clap-clap)
BREAKERS! BREAKERS! ROOOOLLLL BREAKERS! Yay!
Other schools in our athletic conference included Padres, Chieftains and Haybalers. Pretty cool.
The mascot was the Headless Horseman. The team name was the Riders. The girls were the Lady Riders.
We were the Titans.
Yawn.