Awesome Blossoms – Blooming Prairie (MN) High School

Well, I guess it kinda makes sense. You know, “blooming,” “blossoms” … “Fighting,” “battling,” maybe “awesome” … Ah, heck, why didn’t they just go with Eagles or Tigers or somethin’?

Blooming Prairie is a town of 2,000 located in the southeast part of Minnesota. It looks like it’s about a 45-minute drive from Rochester, but otherwise in the middle of absolute nowhere.

These pix all look kinda the same after awhile

Interestingly, BP (not goin’ to type that in again) once had a history of selling bootleg liquor. It seems that BP is in the corner of one county, a “wet” one, and serviced the three “dry” counties all around it. Now, nothing really beats Awesome Blossoms, but Bootleggers and Moonshiners aren’t too bad in themselves.

Can you believe I found a pic for that?

“Notable people” include a couple of state legislators and an actor I never heard of.

Said actor, Josh Braaten, far right

The high school is on the far west side of town. With a mere 350 students, the school somehow snagged a state football championship in 2019. 

There’s an odd entry in Wikipedia for the school, under “School Spirit”:

“Blooming Prairie High showed its school spirit in March 2011 when it showed support for Jordan Ressler, a junior who died in a motor vehicle accident in November 2010, by displaying the University of Texas logo in a human form and by wearing the distinctive orange clothing of the team he loved.”

Et voila!

Really couldn’t find a mascot per se, but there is this guy:

BTW, the school’s colors are black and white. Kind of ironic for a blossom, wouldn’t you say?

Auctioneers – Mullins (SC) High School

This would be a particularly good post to try reading out loud. Just make sure you do that at about ten times your normal speed….

Mullins is a town in South Carolina’s Low Country (which is really just a fancy way of saying “flat and swampy”). Interestingly, the town only dates back to 1872 (and with the area originally being settled in the 1600s). Currently, it has about 4,700 people.

Right on the North Carolina border, the area around Mullins is know for tobacco. In fact, Mullins was once the largest market for tobacco in the world. And that’s where those auctioneers come in….

If you’re not from around those parts (I actually am), you probably don’t know that that’s how tobacco is sold. Basically, tobacco farmers bring their crop to town, putting it in a warehouse where buyers can check it out. It’s then the job of the auctioneer to get the best price for each lot.

So, it seemed pretty natural – to the townsfolk at least – to use those auctioneers as a mascot. I’m not sure when that decision was made, but the high school itself dates back to 1923. I also know that that’s the time when Mullins instituted their tobacco festival, so the two might very well have coincided.

The old high school burned in 1976, with a new one being built about a mile and a half outside the center of town. The school is about 80% Black, with the town being 70% so. Sadly, about 100% of the students are economically disadvantaged.

Looks like somebody’s got an oil leak

“Auctioneers” is often shortened to “Aucs.” Hard to tell, but it looks like they also use an Indian chief as a mascot. 

To be honest, there’s not a lot out there on the mascot or the school. I’d say almost half of my search results were actual auction houses, typically selling non-tobacco items and often located nowhere close to Mullins.

Like Cork, Ireland, for example

Appleknockers - Cobden (IL) Junior-Senior High School

It’s quite simple, really. An appleknocker is someone who knocks apples. Off trees. To harvest them.

It’s also something you might call someone who lives in an area where there are lots of apple orchards. And that does indeed describe Cobden, a town of about 1,000. It’s located in the Shawnee Hills, at the very southern tip of Illinois.

Plenty of peaches too

Founded in 1859, the town took off when the Illinois Central Railroad came through. Today, it supports the nearby farms, orchards, and wineries. Perhaps reflecting that fact, more than half the residents are Hispanic. According to Wikipedia, notable people include an author I never heard of and a murderer.

Well, that's an interesting motto

The high school has only 170 or so students. It’s so small it shares the same building with the junior high school.

That small size, though, once made it famous. In 1964, the tiny high school somehow made it to the state basketball championships. Kind of like the Illinois version of Hoosiers. Except, of course, they lost.

It’s actually quite an incredible story. The first thing you have to realize is that there were no divisions back then. Every team in the state had a chance to win it all.

Even this guy!

Second, the team, which had been playing together since 6^th grade, lost two of its members before the season even began. One tragically drowned on a swim with some teammates. The other knocked up his girlfriend, had to marry her, and was then forced off the team.

Finally, though the team spent a long, silent ride back from Champaign, they were amazed, dumbfounded, knocked over when they got back to Cobden. Seems the whole town had come out to welcome them, lining the route into town for a mile and a half and shutting down the town center with throngs of people.

Heck, the story even made it to Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. There’s also a book on it as well.

• In 1964, the Appleknockers from Cobden, Illinois, Made It All the Way to th | The National Endowment for the Humanities (neh.gov)
• The Amazing Appleknockers: Illinois' Cinderella Basketball Team of 1964: Campbell, Teri, Ryman, Anne: 9780981938646: Amazon.com: Books

By the way, “appleknocker” is also defined as an “unsophisticated country person.” Sounds like the team may have been derisively called that by their opponents early on. As the US did with “Yankee Doodle,” though, Cobdenites took the insult and embraced it. We’ll hear of that theme again in this blog.

Alices – Vincennes (IN) Lincoln

Kind of like “A Boy Named Sue,” eh? I mean these guys (and gals) are going to have to be pretty tough, right?

Vincennes is the oldest city in Indiana. Founded by the French in 1713, it was the territorial capital back in the early 19^th Century. It’s on the Wabash River, right on the border with Illinois, and about halfway between Evansville and Terre Haute.

It’s also home to the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park Rotunda

A town of 18,000+, Vincennes has three high schools. The oldest, Vincennes Lincoln, was formerly downtown, but was relocated in 1989 about three miles southeast of the city center. Alumni include a CNN anchor, one major league baseball player & several NFLers.

The high school has 700+ students, and features all the standard sports. They’ve won three state titles, in basketball and baseball, and ranging from 1923 to 2002.

And, yes, they are indeed the Alices. There are two theories as to the nickname’s origin.

One traces it back to a novel called Alice of Old Vincennes, originally published in 1900. It’s set in the town during the Revolutionary War, and features a patriotic orphan named Alice Roussillon and her romantic interest, the blue-blooded Virginian Lt. Fitzhugh Beverly. It was the national #1 bestseller for six whole months.

The town boosters used the book to draw tourists, going so far as to call Vincennes “Alicetown.” There were sites that claimed to be her birthplace (remember, she’s totally fictional), an Alice Hotel, an Alice Park, an Alice Movie Theater, an Alice Restaurant and an Alice Soda Shop.

The second story dates back to that 1923 championship. Seems the team came from nowhere to win the state basketball title, and folks commented that it was all like Alice in Wonderland. Hmm … don’t know if I’m buyin’ it.

Interestingly, they were once called the Buccaneers. Ironically, the girls’ teams are called the Lady Alices.

The mascot is a little hard to describe. According to one local reporter, it’s a “giant furry tick-looking creature known as the ‘Big A.’" Which, I think, pretty much nails it.