Part of my job in writing stories is doing a little research into opposing team’s mascots.
A peak behind the curtain, when referring to teams, it gets redundant to keep saying the school’s name over and over when referring to them. An easy way I break it up is switching between the school’s mascot and name.
It usually does not take a lot of effort to find any high school’s mascot. I use Max Preps as my first check. Only every now and then does some small private school does not have their mascot listed or I can’t tell from the logo. A school’s website is the next check and usually it’s plastered in the background somewhere on the athletics page.
For girl team’s, I learned to put “Lady” in front of any mascot name. Sometimes it is just that easy to put it front of the mascot name. For some mascots, it is not.
There are two schools in the Wichita Falls area that have the mascot “Bulls” with Graham and Bridgeport always being on the schedule for Bowie and Nocona in almost every sport. (Correction: Graham are the Steers)
Especially around these parts where people know better, I can’t just be lazy and put Lady Bulls. They don’t exist and someone would let me know.
Through further research, I learned Graham girl teams are called “Lady Blues” and at Bridgeport they go by the “Sissies.” Both names are interesting ways to get around this dilemma.
Speaking of things that don’t exist, with Chico being the “Dragons”, their mascot opens up a whole can of worms.
Who’s to say a lady bull doesn’t or can’t exist in fiction or mythology, though a quick Google search doesn’t bring up anything obvious in that realm.
I’ve had that question with Lindsay’s mascot, the “Knights.” While we’ve seen lady knights in medieval fantasy stories for decades, I’m pretty sure during actual days of traditional knights and lords, only men were allowed.
Technically, females have been knighted for more than 100 years, but besides putting “Dame” in their name it’s not like they don armor, swords, shields, etc. like we think of when we see knight.
Still, Lindsay calls its girl teams the Lady Knights so I have as well in print.
The most common form of mascot name in high school sports is an animal.
Of the eight school districts covered in The Bowie News coverage area, only Nocona’s is not some animal, but a type of person (Indian). Bears (Gold-Burg), longhorns (Forestburg) and panthers (Saint Jo), oh my. I want to pet a bulldog (Prairie Valley) and a jackrabbit (Bowie). Bellevue and Montague are both eagles.
A fun scenario every fan who has ever made a sign for a sporting event has been to imagine what would happen if the school’s mascots met for a confrontation.
The ones that are obviously one-sided are usual easy fodder for sign makers.
Some designs of mascots stand out from others, with school colors needing to play on things in unexpected ways or fierce designs for sometimes docile animals.
My favorite one I see sometimes, whenever one of my school’s play at their gym, is Springtown’s “Porcupine” mascot. The thing is so monstrous looking, it reminds me of the legendary Pokemon, Groudon.
Another unique one I remember seeing is the Grandview “Zebras.” Yes, you better believe the school colors are the colors of a zebra. Of course they keep the stripe pattern of a zebra on their uniform and football helmets and it’s only natural they run out of the mouth of the fiercest looking zebra head at games as well.
The only way my mascot knowledge grows is when my team’s play different schools, which is hard to do for some of them unless they make it far in the playoffs to play some teams that are hours drives away they would never play normally.
With the Nocona girl’s basketball team recently making it to the state tournament, a few new schools had mascots that made me do a double-take.
The Frost Polar Bears is the most perfectly named mascot for a school in the state. I know the town was named after Samuel R. Frost and not because it snows there anymore than more than the rest of the state, but you have to lean in on this opportunity and they did.
No other school in Texas could be the polar bears. It just would not work.
Not just that, they had a host of other options to go with that no other school could have gotten away with, but they went with the most apex, coolest predator in the artic climate.
The school colors being blue and white were just the icing on the cake.
It was unfortunate they completely went away from this winter theme at said playoff game when the student section dressed in the always fun “Hawaiian day” theme.
I almost put as much stock in that decision as to why Nocona beat the leis off of them in the game. Embrace what you are Frost.
Another unique mascot encountered came later during the state tournament. The Lady Indians played the Wellington Skyrockets. I’m sorry, what? Named after a firework? The logo looks more like just a rocket. Either way, that is different.
Even if you want to just zero in on the rocket in the name, Wellington is located in the panhandle, 543 miles and more than an eight hour drive from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Further research shows one person who was born, but not raised, in Wellington, John Aaron, did work at NASA as an engineer and is said to have played an important role in the Apollo 12 and 13 missions. Maybe that played a part.
Probably some other thing is the reason which 10 minutes of Google searching did not bring up. I just thought it was unique.

We would love to hear from our readers what school mascot names you have come across and why they stand out. Email me at sports@bowienewsonline.com or share it on our Facebook page.