A high school’s mascot can portray strength, community identity or in some cases be a clever melding of the institution and its history or surroundings.
A search this summer through the database uncovered plenty of Eagles, Lions, Bears, Bulldogs, Knights and Cougars.
But it also revealed some fascinating mascot choices, many with interesting stories.
There are more than 1,500 schools in the MaxPreps database with Eagle or some variation of Eagle as their mascot. Likewise, Lions and Tigers each top the 1,000-school mark, oh my. And then there are the Bears, which come in with nearly 600 entries.
There are more than 900 Bulldogs and Warriors, more than 750 Knights and nearly 600 Cougars.
However, some schools break the mold and opt for … more unusual or eccentric mascots. Some are historically tied to the school while others fall into their lap by happenstance.
Of the nearly 25,000 high schools in the database we’ve picked 20 with the most clever and unusual mascot names. In most cases they are the only school with that mascot.
Most Unique Mascots in High School Sports
1. Avon Old Farms (Avon, Conn.) | Winged Beavers
There’s no ancient mythology celebrating a flying rodent. The Winged Beaver sprouts from school founder Theadate Pope Riddle, who believed the indigenous beaver was a natural choice for the school’s mascot. However, according to a 2011 issue of the Avon Record, she added the wings to symbolize the aspiration to soar.
2. Belfry (Mont.) | Bats
As much as we love interesting mascot choices, we also are a fan of clever and creative word play. Boomers and Gen Xers will no doubt have heard the saying “bats in the belfry” in reference to a person not of sound mind (a belfry is the structure in a bell tower that houses the bells). Belfry, located on the border with Wyoming, was named for a local doctor and created by the construction of the Yellowstone Park Railroad. Interestingly enough, there are no bell towers in Belfry.
3. Cairo (Ga.) | Syrupmakers
Cairo is known as “Syrup City” due to the Roddenberry Syrup plant that existed until 2002. Legend says the workers once brought jackets to a football game to keep the players dry and the moniker stuck. The girls teams are traditionally called the Syrupmaids.
4. Centralia (Ill.) | Orphans
Originally known as the Cardinals or Redbirds because of their red uniforms, legend has it that coach Arthur Trout renamed the team after his favorite book “Orphans of the Storm” while others say the name came about from the ragtag looking players resembling “as sad as a band of unwanted orphans.”
5. Chester (Calif.) | Volcanoes
Situated on the shores of Lake Almanor in the Sierra Nevadas, Chester also sits in the shadows of Lassen Peak, an active volcano in Lassen Volcanic National Park. The peak last erupted from 1914-17. The school was built in 1951 and the students voted to give the school the unique mascot.
6. Cobden (Ill.) | Appleknockers
The school rose to athletic prominence in the 1960s with an improbable run to a state basketball title. When Cobden began it didn’t have a mascot, so other area schools used Appleknockers as a derogatory term for the school due to the area’s apple and peach orchards. After the basketball title, the mascot’s legacy was cemented.
7. Diomede (Alaska) | Dateliners
Diomede is a pair of islands — Little and Big as well as Tomorrow and Yesterday islands — separated by the International Dateline. Big Diomede belongs to Russia and is the easternmost point of the far-reaching country. Little Diomede is reported to have as few as 40 students and the 2000 Census had 146 people living on the island.
9. Frankfort (Ind.) | Hot Dogs
We love a clever mascot choice and the Hot Dogs certainly fit the bill. Town founders John William and Nicholas Pence honored their heritage by naming the city northwest of Indianapolis after Frankfurt, Germany. The school was founded in 1892 and the Hot Dogs the logical choice for a mascot.
10. Kingsford (Mich.) | Flivvers
Hailing from the Upper Peninsula, the Flivvers got their name from the nickname of the Ford Model T. Henry Ford built a plant in Kingsford in the 1920s. According to accounts, sportswriters began using “Fords” as Kingsford’s nickname and it soon morphed into Flivvers.
11. Hale Ray (Moodus, Conn.) | Noises
Like many schools, Hale Ray dropped the Indians moniker in recent years and chose a pretty cool local historical reference for its new name. The Moodus area of Connecticut has produced mysterious subterranean noises that, according to the New England Historical Society, frightened Puritan settlers and native Wangunk Indians for centuries. The sounds, some like thunder and others like pistol shots, are believed to be low-level seismic activity.
12. Hamlin (Texas) | Pied Pipers
A well-played take off of the Grimm Brothers tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the town of Hamlin embraced its similar name and ran with it. Smack dab in the heart of Texas, the Class 2A school was a football state finalist in 2019. The Grimm Brothers tale follows a pied (multicolored) piper hired by a Middle Ages town to lure rats away with his magic flute. When the citizens refuse to pay him, he retaliates by luring the town’s children away as he did the rats.
13. Doane Stuart (Albany, N.Y.) | Thunder Chickens
Doane Stuart merged with The Taylor School to form Hudson Ridge starting next school year. The two schools, however, kept the awesome mascot. Doane Stuart had no mascot when it was founded in 1975 and by the early 90s the students took up a campaign for the Thunder Chickens. It was vetoed by administrators but a student donning a chicken costume forced the name to stick around where it was eventually embraced by all.
14. Huron (Ann Arbor, Mich.) | River Rats
In the late 1960s, Ann Arbor students began referring to the newly constructed school with the nickname “River Rats” as a joke for students who would attend the school on the Huron River near an old medical waste site. The name was popular with students, but not Principal Paul Meyers. Ballots to determine a new mascot received tepid enthusiasm as students kept writing in River Rats. Eventually local papers began using the River Rats name for the school, calling the baseball team the Bat Rats and wrestlers as Mat Rats. It was the media validation that caused the name to stick.
15. Hutto (Texas) | Hippos
The Hippos are one of one and offer a few stories as to how they came to be. One says the football team had no uniforms, using feed sacks, prompting the opposing coach to declare they looked “like a bunch of hippos.” The more popular tale revolves around a circus train stop in 1915 where a hippopotamus escaped its rail car and waded in the waters of Cottonwood Creek. A telegraph urged other trains “Stop trains! Hippo loose in Hutto.”
16. Kailua (Hawaii) | Surfriders
Though surfing has likely existed for centuries, for most it’s associated with Hawaii and the waves of the North Shore. Kailua, on the windward side of the island, is the only school in America with the Surfrider mascot and among its alumni are Michael and Derek Ho, legendary Hawaiian-born surfers.
17. Orofino (Idaho) | Maniacs
The name does not derive from the fact there’s a mental institution in Orofino. Rather the name has origins from the 1927 basketball team. The ragtag squad took ribbing for not having uniforms but took that teasing out on opponents by playing like a “bunch of maniacs” according to newspaper reports.
18. Rhinelander (Wis.) | Hodags
First things first — a Hodag is a mythical creature with the head of a frog, the face of an elephant, thick, short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end. The Hodag also had green eyes, huge fangs and two horns sprouting from its temples. First “discovered” in the late 1890s by Gene Shepard, he later admitted to it being a hoax. But the legend of the Hodag was born and has been embraced by Rhinelanders in much the same way as those in California, Oregon and Washington embrace the legend of Bigfoot.
19. Sleepy Hollow (N.Y.) | Horsemen
The school hits it out of the park for choosing the Horsemen in deference to Washington Irving’s timeless story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The tale follows Ichabod Crane, a superstitious schoolmaster, on his ride home from a harvest party where he’s chased by the Headless Horseman. Among the notable alumni is Caitlyn Jenner.
20. Tikigaq (Point Hope, Alaska) | Harpooners
Sitting on a tiny spit in far northern Alaska on the Arctic Ocean accessible by only air or sea, whaling is woven into the culture of the community of less than 1,000 people. The school’s website says the whaling community does its whale hunt in spring and many of the students take part in the ritual. Point Hope is on the oldest continually occupied sites in North America.
21. Yuma (Ariz.) | Criminals
Founded in 1909, three years before statehood, the school moved to the abandoned territorial prison in 1910 before building a new school in 1913. When the football team traveled to Phoenix for a game, they were dubbed the “Criminals” after their victory. The nickname was at first a slur but became a source of pride and was adopted as the official mascot in 1917. The Yuma Territorial Prison was made infamous by the movie “3:10 to Yuma.”
Honorable Mention
- Wales (Alaska) Killer Whales
- Dunn (Los Olivos, Calif.) Earwigs
- Marvelwood (Kent, Conn.) Pterodactyls
- Bend (Ore.) Lava Bears
- Freeport (Ill.) Pretzels
- Millennium (Tracy, Calif.) Falcons
- Brewer (Maine) Witches
- Watersmeet (Mich.) Nimrods
- West Plains (Mo.) Zizzers
- Bray-Doyle (Bray, Okla.) Donkeys
