My small town’s mascot was the Tigers. The next town to the north? Tigers. The town west of us? Their school shut down in 1997, but they were Tigers, too. The town south? Panthers. There is a town in the next county north that also is the Panthers.
Lots of big cats. No Cougars/Pumas/Mountain Lions, despite the fact that they’re totally a native species. There was one town whose mascot was the Bobcats.
My High School was not a sport high school. More or less all the cool kids were what would be considered the band nerds and arts took up half the foot print of the school.
We were originally officially the… Ahem… “Tillicums and Frontiersmen”. Which most kids were only vaguely aware of. There were no mascots, our teams basically just used our town’s name and sport was one of those things you like vaguely knew was happening. Nobody used the team names because we all thought it was stupid.
About 15 years ago the conversation developed that it was a pretty colonial name and not cool and they changed it around the same time three other schools in neighboring towns did theirs. All three towns seemingly independently (a student led conspiracy was suspected but never confirmed) all named their school teams “the (insert school name here) Storm”.
So now there’s just three teams all called Storm with zero mascots and people continue to not give a damn about sports… So I guess sometimes you get a theme?
Big cats, wolves, eagles, and uncomfortable caricatures of people. Heaven forbid a school ever choose, like, a local frog or hedgehog or whatever for a mascot.
My small town’s mascot was the Tigers. The next town to the north? Tigers. The town west of us? Their school shut down in 1997, but they were Tigers, too. The town south? Panthers. There is a town in the next county north that also is the Panthers.
Lots of big cats. No Cougars/Pumas/Mountain Lions, despite the fact that they’re totally a native species. There was one town whose mascot was the Bobcats.
My High School was not a sport high school. More or less all the cool kids were what would be considered the band nerds and arts took up half the foot print of the school.
We were originally officially the… Ahem… “Tillicums and Frontiersmen”. Which most kids were only vaguely aware of. There were no mascots, our teams basically just used our town’s name and sport was one of those things you like vaguely knew was happening. Nobody used the team names because we all thought it was stupid.
About 15 years ago the conversation developed that it was a pretty colonial name and not cool and they changed it around the same time three other schools in neighboring towns did theirs. All three towns seemingly independently (a student led conspiracy was suspected but never confirmed) all named their school teams “the (insert school name here) Storm”.
So now there’s just three teams all called Storm with zero mascots and people continue to not give a damn about sports… So I guess sometimes you get a theme?
Big cats, wolves, eagles, and uncomfortable caricatures of people. Heaven forbid a school ever choose, like, a local frog or hedgehog or whatever for a mascot.
There’s also Catholic schools with crusaders which may be more concerning than the caricatures