Sunday, June 9, 2024

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:

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