Mascot Envy

One of the things I enjoy when I broadcast different teams, is to learn a little bit of the history behind how the school formed, in the case of consolidated school districts, or schools that have several small towns nearby. On occasion, I will make note of them in my game blog. With a rare off night, I delve into mascot envy...



This blog entry has been a sort of work-in-progress now that I look back at a few different conversations that I have had in the last couple months. It all began at the end of the football season this past fall.

I was making copies of the Monmouth-Roseville Titans football games on CD, and to fit the games on two CD's, I had to do some editing. Most of the editing was done in the pregame, halftime, and postgame shows.

During one of the broadcasts, I happened to catch a snippet of a halftime interview conducted by Titans football play-by-play voice Tom Peterson, talking with Monmouth-Roseville Athletic Director Chuck Grant. I don't quite remember the topic of their conversation, but it swayed to Chuck having a call-to-action in trying to figure out what the old G&O (Gladstone/Oquawka High School) mascot was. He said that he and a couple friends have been trying to figure this out for a few years. Tom then mentioned the old Viola High School, where his father attended, and didn't know the answer to their mascot.

It only took me a couple of clicks, as I knew exactly where to unearth this information. Illinois High School Glory Days was my destination.  In no time, I found that it was the Gladstone/Oquawka Hawks and the Viola Lumberjacks. 

I found that the Lumberjacks was a pretty unique mascot for a high school in Illinois.  It reminded me of the old Prairie City High School, Cobras.  You don't hear of any high school, at least in Illinois, call themselves the Cobras.  Where on Earth did a tiny high school in western Illinois come up with the Cobras?  Prairie City consolidated with Bushnell High School (Braves) in the early 1950's to become the Bushnell-Prairie City Spartans.  Back to the Viola Lumberjacks, Viola and New Windsor (Norseman) consolidated in 1952 to form Winola High School.  I always found Winola to have a unique mascot as well, the Jets.

Taylor Bell wrote a book on mascots in Illinois, entitled, "Why Mascots Have Tales," and I have never even read this book yet...I feel ashamed to admit that.  One of these days, maybe during the couple weeks break between basketball and the spring sports season, I'll sit down and give it a read.  There are several mascots that I would enjoy researching to learn where the school came up with the nickname.  Of course, many mascots in the early days of high school athletics were derived by sports writers, and many in later years were adopted after a school-wide vote.  Still, it's something I'd like to research someday.

As I drive from town to town, I occasionally head to the IHSGD website and check out the small towns and what the mascots were.  For example, during my swing to southern Illinois, I spent a night covering basketball at Carmi-White County High School.  Originally, Carmi High School (Bulldogs), the school closed in 1988.  The consolidation effort occurred with Crossville (Tigers).  Carmi also had another high school from 1904 to 1950, East Side High School, which was a school for African-Americans. I also drove through Akin (Bulldogs) on my trip. 

Last week, I mentioned that I was talking with referee Jude Kiah about the Glory Days website, and he mentioned that he also enjoys the history of small towns and high schools, and we talked extensively about some of the former high schools in McDonough County, such as Bardolph, Adair, and Good Hope. 

In a conversation I had on my daily sports talk show Sportsline, on 1590 WAIK, Glory Days website founder Dave Nanninga talked about the history of the website, as well as the unique mascots around the state.  This talk led to the creation of a new page on Glory Days, Mascots & Nicknames.

Along with Dave and I, there are three others involved in the website, Kev Varney, Richard Soseman, and Cody Cutter.  With the advent of the new mascots page on the website, Dave asked each of us to list our top ten unique mascots.  Here is how I voted.

Beau Spencer's Most Unique Mascots (deactivated high schools)
(listed in alphabetical order)
Arabs (Sumner High School)
Cardunals (Dundee High School)
Eskimos (Forrest Township and Forrest-Strawn-Wing)
Firemen (Chebanse High School)
Flying Dutchmen (Carrollton St. John)
Hummers (Hurst-Bush High School)
Kingfishers (Kampsville High School)
Leprechauns (Roberts-Thawville High School)
Mighty Swedes (Andover High School)
Zebras (New Baden High School)

Dundee Cardunals
What I found most unique about the Cardunals mascot, is that it's an odd take.  This mascot was a bird at Dundee, but the mascot is an acronym for the towns that made up Dundee High School.  Those towns are Carpentersville, West Dundee, and Algonquin.  Speaking of acronyms, one of my biggest thrills in working with the Glory Days website was when I stumbled upon the meaning behind Balyki High School in Bath, near Havana.  Balyki was an acronym for Bath, Lynchburg, and Kilbourne.  This was not easy to find on any map, because Lynchburg is a township, and it took driving around the Bath area, and I read a sign for Lynchburg Township on a country road. 

Stay tuned to the Glory Days website to find out who the writing staff voted on as the top ten most unique mascots among the deactivated high schools on the website.