Hematites – Ishpeming (MI) High School

As if Ishpeming wasn’t bad enough as is ... It’s kind of like if your last name is Humperdink. Jim or Bill might go good with that, you know. Definitely not Englebert though.

So what is a hematite anyway? It’s basically just a mineral form of iron oxide – i.e., the basis of iron ore, the primary input into making steel. 

So, why not the Steelers, or the Miners, or … anything else, for that matter?

Mining the stuff does actually seem to be the town’s reason for being. Founded in 1868, Ishpeming currently has about 6,500 people. It’s parked firmly in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

And speaking of that last bit, Ishpeming is also the home of the band Da Yoopers, as well as the Da Yoopers Tourist Trap, Museum & Rock Shop.

Apart from the iron ore, the town is also the birthplace of skiing in US, and is home to the National Ski Hall of Fame. Why is that, you might ask. Swedes, lots and lots of Swedes.

The town does have some famous sons, including Chuck Fairbanks (college & NFL coach), Tom Izzo (longtime Michigan State basketball coach) & Glenn Seaborg (Nobel-winning chemist).

The high school dates back to 1874, with complete rebuilds in 1908 and 1930. Currently, there are only about 210 students. Interestingly, the mascot dates all the way back to 1901. 

It’s a small school, so when the Hematites won the state football championship, it made Sports Illustrated.

It’s quite a story … The Div 7 school had only 30 players, with a number of the team playing both offense and defense. They also had a backup kicker with Down’s syndrome, a player who had to fight a long, protracted legal battle to even be on the team. To make things even more dramatic, they also had a star receiver pass away, the coach’s son & former QB commit suicide, and a future star get killed by a drunk driver. Finally, they had lost a previous final in the final seconds two years previously. Oh, and let’s not forget the 7+ hour drive the team had to make. Whew!

Halfbreeds – Aniak (AK) High School

Come again? 

I mean, Wikipedia is telling me that “Half-breed is a term, now considered offensive, used to describe anyone who is of mixed race; although, in the United States, it usually refers to people who are half Native American and half European/white.” Not exactly PC, is it?

So, if the Redskins became the Commanders, and the Indians the Guardians, how come we still have something like the Halfbreeds? Well, this is one that the community just so happened to chose themselves. As the school board president at the time commented, "Most people are of mixed race, mixed background. We're proud of it.” Kind of like the Fighting Irish, I guess.

The teams had formerly been the Apostles (boys) & Angels (girls). Surprisingly, Halfbreeds actually came along in the late 1970s. 

Aniak is a town of 500+ people and is about 300 miles east of Anchorage. It’s accessible only by boat (on the Kuskokwim River) or air.  Winters feature temps of -55 and snow accumulations of 60 inches. The town dates back to a gold strike in 1910.

The high school has 55 students and a staff of 7 (including the bus driver). Somehow or other, they manage to field 4 teams – basketball and volleyball squads for both genders. Not too surprisingly, those are both indoor sports.

Golden Mules – Solanco (PA) High School

Now, mules are a weird enough mascot as is. But golden mules? That’s taking it to another level.

The first thing to know about Solanco is that it is not a town. Instead, it’s the nickname for the school district of Southern Lancaster County – SoLanCo. The district covers 180 sq miles, with not quite 32,000 people (and only the 1 high school).

We’re talking about the southeast corner of PA here, along the Susquehanna River and equidistant to Harrisburg & Philadelphia.

The high school is actually located in Quarryville. This town of 2,500 is right smack-dab in the middle of – drum roll, please – southern Lancaster County. It’s also home to the Solanco Fairgrounds.

Could be anywhere

The school has slightly over 1,000 students. Between the girls and the boys, they field 18 different sports teams. “Notable alumni” include 3 folks, a politician & NBA player I never heard of, plus a baseball player that I have.

Nice parking lot

It sounds like – once again – a sportswriter was behind the mascot. According to a local paper:

“’Bricker [said sportswriter] would drive down to cover football games and during the trip would view numerous mule teams toiling in the fields. He likened the boys on the gridiron to the hard-working, never-give-up nature of the mule, and since Solanco was wearing yellow jerseys, he referred to them as the Golden Mules.”

The original mascot was a real mule:

These days, though, we’ve got ourselves another furry:

Plus, they’ve got one of these crazy things:

Flivvers – Kingsford (MI) High School

Kingsford is a town of 5,100 in Michigan’s Upper Penisula, right on the border with Wisconsin. It’s got a paper mill, a foundry, and a ski resort (with a famous ski jump). Not much around, but it does look very pretty.

The town came to being in 1923, and was named after real estate agent EG Kingsford. He had bought up some acreage for the Ford Motor Company, to supply & process wood parts for automobiles, esp. woody station wagons.

Hence the flivvers. If you’re not familiar with that rather out-of-date term, it’s basically the same as “jalopy” or “beater.”  The term itself is of unknown origin.

The town is also the source of Kingsford Charcoal, originally made from leftover wood from the Ford plant. It was originally called Ford Charcoal, but changed its name to Kingsford when Ford got out of the business and some local business leaders bought in. I’m sure everyone out there has used that stuff at sometime or other.

Local teams were originally called the Fords. A sportswriter, desperate for a little elegant variation I would imagine, coined them the Flivvers, which seems to have stuck.

The high school has a restored Model T in the lobby. They have redone it, though, in the school colors of blue and yellow. 

The school itself has not quite 600 students. They play their outdoor sports at the awesomely alliterative Flivver Field.

Here the site of a Model-T club meetup

Not too surprisingly, winter sports are quite popular.