Tarblooders – Glenville (OH) High School

Tarbabes?  Meet Tarblooders.

Glenville, population 22,500, is a suburb in the northeast part of Cleveland. It dates back to 1870, and was originally a small village, then a resort community. Later, it became the center of Cleveland’s Jewish population. Finally, it became a victim of white flight, and is now 90% African American.

The high school dates back to 1892, and currently has 400 students. Alumni include Steve Harvey and the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster.

The school is well-known for its athletics, especially football and track. As for the latter, they hold no less than 18 state titles.

There are a couple of possibilities for the mascot, including from a:

• School cheer, indicating that they would whack the "tar" and "blood" out of their opponents
• Person who installed (tar-soaked) railroad ties, working so hard they were said to sweat "blood" and "tar"
• Person who used to haul tar from the tarpits to the railroad tracks

Fittingly, the school's colors are red & black.

Oddly, though, their mascot is some robot-y kind of thing.

Tarbabes – Compton (CA) High School

Whoa! I’m not sure I wanna touch that one.

Luckily, it’s not what I thought at all.

Turns out the high school was once associated with a community college. And the latter’s mascot was a Tartar. With me so far?

Now, you may associate said mascot with a sauce served with fish, what’s scraped off in the dentist’s office, or perhaps raw hamburger. It also, however, describes a member of a Mongol tribe – and, thus, something suitably fierce enough for a mascot. In fact, it’s also used in general to describe a person “with a generally bad temper or an unexpectedly formidable individual.” Even better.

Now, back to the high school… Seeing as the community college were originally the Tartars, the high school began calling themselves the Baby Tartars. Somehow or other that became the Tartar Babies, and eventually the Tar Babes and then the Tarbabes.

You’re probably familiar with Compton. It’s actually pretty notorious. It was the turf of the Bloods and Crips, and was once known as the “Murder Capital of the United States.” It’s also the home of gangsta rap, including NWA (who did Straight Outta Compton), Easy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Coolio & Kendrick Lamar.

On a more wholesome side, it was also home to actors James Coburn and Kevin Costner, Hall of Fame baseball player Eddie Murray, and Venus & Serena Williams.

The high school dates all the way back to 1896. Today, it has 1,300 students. Surprisingly, it is now 80% Latino. Some famous alumni include actress & singer Polly Bergen, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle & baseball player Duke Snider.

You know, Candice’s mom

By the way, in case you couldn’t tell from the pic at the top, the Tarbabe is wearing a diaper.

Syrupmakers – Cairo (GA) High School

Hard to believe, but this one actually has nothing to do with the fact that the town name is pronounced exactly like Karo syrup.

The connection comes rather from the W.B. Roddenbery Company, who were known for manufacturing sugarcane syrup. As I understand it, that’s like molasses, but not as strong. In addition to cane syrup, the company also produced other syrups, pickles, boiled peanuts, and peanut butter. It closed in 2002

The town has over 10,000 people, and is in the southwest part of the state, right on the border with Florida. It dates back to 1835. It’s main claim to fame is being the birthplace of Jackie Robinson.

The high school is officially the Cairo High School College and Career Academy. It’s got quite 1,300 students. Looks like they have all the standard sports, with the 2008 football team winning the Georgia AAA title. 

The mascot dates back to 1940, replacing the very standard (and extremely boring) Tigers. Supposedly, the Rodenberry Company had donated rain jackets to the school with “Roddenbury Syrup” on them. Guess the name stuck. In 1986, ESPN voted the mascot the best in the country. 

In 1994, the high school added a physical mascot – basically, a big pitcher. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a pic of it.

By the way, it’s only the boys teams that are the Makers. Girls teams are called the Maids instead.

Swathers – Hesston (KS) High School

What the hell is that? Hold on, and I’ll explain.

Hesston is about 40 miles north of Wichita. It dates back to 1886, when the railroad came through. Today, it has about 3,500 people 

It’s known for a Mennonite college (Hesston College), lawn mowers, farm equipment, an F5 tornado, and a school shooting.

It’s that farm equipment that is the secret to the mascot. A swather is a piece of such, typically used to cut hay. According to good, ol’ Merriam-Webster, "A swather is a harvesting machine that cuts and windrows grain and seed crops; also: a mower attachment that windrows the swath." The mascot dates back to 1970.

The high school has about 270 students. I really couldn’t fine much on it, or on its athletics (though it does seem they support the usual sports – football, baseball, basketball, debate, forensics …). I do know that a swather machine plays a special role for the football team, with the players massing behind it at the start of home games, then running onto the field.

Must be pretty awe-inspiring.

Spudders – Ridgefield (WA) High School

Beeters, meet Spudders.

Yup, we’ve headed about 800 west from Chinook MT to Ridgefield WA, as well as subbing out sugar beets for potatoes as we go.

Don’t need to explain potatoes to you. Suffice it to say that Ridgefield is in the middle of a big potato-growing region. 

This city of 10,300 is on the Columbia River, just downstream from Portland, OR. Its main claim to fame seems to be its being where U-Haul got its start. It’s also got important Native American (Chinook!) ties, as well as associations with Lewis and Clark. The city dates back only to 1909.

The high school is just a year or two younger than the town. Currently, it has 730 students. 

Athletics must be popular, as 75% of the school’s Wikipedia page is dedicated to it. Among all those words, I could count only five state championships though. The article’s mostly given over to sixth-place finishes and sharing details like this, for the girls soccer team: “Ridgefield goalkeeper Gabriela Semlick made two saves in the PK shootout, including the fourth attempt when the senior tipped a shot up that bounced off the cross bar and out.”

As for the mascot, he gets pretty short shrift. Even so, USA Today has him down as the best mascot in the state. He’s also in the ESPN Mascot Hall of Fame, and has been featured on Letterman.

BTW, one of RHS’s feeder schools, Union Ridge Elementary, are know as the Tater Tots.

Sugarbeeters - Chinook (WA) High School

I dunno, kinda sounds like a kids cereal.

Chinook is a town of 1,200 located in central Montana, a few miles from the Canadian border. The name comes from the chinook wind, a warm easterly breeze that blows from the Rockies. The only real site there is the Bear Paw Battlefield, the last stand of the Nez Perce. 

The town is also a major center of … drumroll, please … sugar beets. In case you’re not familiar with those, they’re actually a major source of sugar, substituting for sugar cane in colder climates. In the US, they actually account for more than half of all domestic sugar production.

Whence the mascot? Well, in 1929, the local sugar beet refinery donated jerseys with sugar beets on them to the school’s basketball team. Today, that high school has only 120 students.

The mascot, on the other hand, has become nationally known. In fact, it came in third place in a USA Today competition for weirdest high school mascot. Luckily, it does have a physical, on-field representative, one Shug (pronounced “shoog”):

Fear the beet!

Spy Ponders – Arlington (MA) High School

Ponder:  verb, “to think about (something) carefully, especially before making a decision or reaching a conclusion”

So, are they pondering the sky? Going to make a decision about it? Come to some conclusion (“It’s blue!”)? What the heck is going on here?

Well, Spy Pond appears to be a large part of the town. It’s pretty smack dab in the center of it, and used to be an important source of income, providing ice that that they sold all over the northeast. A local businessman, Frederic Tudor, was known as the Ice King (which would not be a bad mascot – hint, hint).

The mascot dates back only to 2020. Before that, they were the very non-PC Indians. Previous monikers include the Trojans (in the 1970s) and the Red & Grey. Any of which would be just fine.

So, what’s a spy ponder look like? I honestly have no idea. 

It looks like they don’t either. In fact, it looks like they punted, going with Cyrus the Mastodon instead. So, why a mastodon? And why Cyrus?

Well, sounds like it’s another reach. First, we’ve got a a 42,000-year-old mastodon tusk that was pulled from Spy Pond in 1959 by some ice cutters. Next, we’ve got the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum. Now, the tusk isn’t displayed there … Interestingly, Dallin just so happened to be the sculptor of the Menotomy Hunter, the source of the old logo for AHS:

The high school dates back to 1858 and currently has 1,500 students. It ranks in the top 5% of HSs in the country. They list almost 30 “notable alumni,” but Olympia Dukakis is the only one I’ve heard of.

As for Arlington, it has over 46,000 people and dates back to 1635. It’s just outside Boston, is close to Harvard and Tufts, and is a pretty expensive place to live. It’s also the birthplace of Uncle Sam, the location of the first public children's library, and the scene of extensive fighting in the Revolutionary War.

Spy Pond on the right