By Margaret Sizemore Clark

What's in a Mascot?

When you attended school, your alma mater most likely had a mascot, a symbol that stood for the power and grit of the team and the players that represented your school.  Whether it be in sports, a spelling bee, or a debate, there were mighty Tigers, Lions, or Bears.  Eagles, Hawks and Falcons represented feared birds of prey.  Mustangs, Pirates, Vikings, and Bulldogs were forces to be reckoned with.  The mascot of the high school I attended was a Burro. (I can hear you laughing.) That’s right… a burro, and I can leave to your imaginations what we were called besides that name!  Kind of like Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue”, we had to be tough to survive and defend the honor of our beloved high school.

Our high school was not named for Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan. It is often confused with another high school in Burbank since both schools are in Southern California.  My high school can be found on a Navy base in the Mojave Desert.  The first Commanding Officer of that base was named Sherman E. Burroughs, so could a high school named for him have anything other than a burro for its mascot?  We alumni are proud of our school and of being Burroughs graduates. 

I got to thinking: what other unusual mascots are out there in America? I did a Google search and found that there are some “humdingers”, as my mother would have described them.  I felt a whole lot better about being a Burro; in fact, my school’s mascot didn’t even make the top ten!

A high school in Mississippi is named the St. Stanislaus Rock-a-Chaws. Rock-a-Chaw comes from an old Choctaw word meaning “devil grass,’ and it refers to the pesky little sand burrs that abounded on the St. Stanislaus campus before the lawns were cultivated.  The irony, to me, is that a high school with “Saint” in its name has devil grass for its mascot.  Maybe fighting devil grass is like fighting Bermuda grass and you know how tough that is!

For any crafters out there, you have to like the Crooksville Ceramics, from a high school located in Ohio.  Evidently Crooksville was considered the pottery capital of the world in the early 20th century, therefore Crooksville High School adopted the mascot of Ceramics, as in pots, jugs, and vases. Ceramics is fragile, and easily broken.  Just the imagery cracks me up. 

In San Antonio, Texas I found the Central Catholic Buttons.  In their case Buttons are not the utilitarian objects that are sewn onto clothing.  They are in fact the little pointy things found on a rattlesnake’s tail just below the rattles.  I’ll take their word for it, and I definitely wouldn’t mess with them!

Closer to where I live are the Bonanza Antlers from Oregon.  The choice could refer moose antlers, antelope antlers, deer antlers, or any other kind of animal that has a rack.  They chose to keep it generic, but I found it odd that it was the antlers rather than the animal that sported them that became the mascot.

Illinois has an entry for an unusual mascot as well, the Teutopolis Wooden Shoes.  The Wooden Shoes got their name from a coach in the 1930s and was chosen because it honored the town’s German heritage.  Additionally, there was only one cobbler in town, so he got the honor.  I wonder if they stomp their opponents???  Or maybe kick them?

Where else but Indiana could you find the Speedway High School Sparkplugs?  I think the choice is appropriate and understandably so. The whole town has a racecar theme, so what better image for the local high school than the Sparkplug?  The name says it all.

Representing Minnesota are the Blooming Prairie Awesome Blossoms.  I guess if you are going to be a blossom, you had better be awesome.  The town’s teams have been known to win athletic and mascot competitions, so assuming they would wilt when facing the Tigers and Lions of the world would be incorrect.  It brought to my mind what is said about assuming, so the Awesome Blossom mascot could be a close second to being a Burro.

Not to be outdone are the Bad Axe Hatchets located in the state of Michigan.  Now before you go jumping to conclusions, the town has been known as Bad Axe ever since a military surveyor found a broken axe embedded in a tree.  I recently passed through Bad Axe; it’s a traditional Midwest town with a square in the center of the city, and there were no scary hatchets to be seen anywhere.  It turns out we were looking for Bad Axe, Wisconsin, where my husband’s family were said to be the founders, but we mistakenly found ourselves in the Michigan version of Bad Axe.  Who knew there could be TWO Bad Axes??

When I went to college in Coalinga, California I discovered the high school in town had the Horned Toad as its mascot.  I used to catch the little lizards when I was a youngster and never thought of them as particularly tough. (We were always told they could spit blood from their eyes, but I never saw one actually do it.) But when a marketer depicts a horned toad standing upright on its back legs, sporting bulging muscles and a mean face, it gives off an altogether different vibe.

There are many, many more mascots that qualify as being quirky or one-of-a-kind, but no matter what they might be, they honor something in the community’s past, and the folks who support those schools are proud of their heritage.  My high school celebrated its 80th anniversary last weekend, so to honor that milestone the Navy provided a flyover of jets before the graduation ceremony.  I’d say that was VERY cool!!

 In closing, and with a straight face I can cheer: We’re the Burros, mighty, mighty Burros!

Many, many thanks to Stuff Bracket/Scorebook Live for the information and some of the humor used in this article.