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 (MT) 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

Spoofhounds - Maryville (MO) High School

Blood? Sure. Bassett? No problem. Fox, grey? Sound good. Heck, I’ll even take wolf and elk. But spoof? Man, I just dunno know.

So, whence the spoofhound? Well, it seems it’s a “a play on words, suggesting a dog that is lazy or not very effective.” Supposedly, they were given out at carnivals and such like. 

Now, what does that have to do with Maryville High School? Well, sounds like we’ve got another Yankee Doodle Dandy story here. In particular, one of the school’s coaches called out his team by denigrating them as “spoofhounds.”. In fun, the team took it on for real, and the rest is history.

Maryville? It’s about 100 miles north of Kansas City, dates back to 1845, and currently has about 10,000 people. It’s home to Northwest Missouri State College, a couple of governors, and a Kentucky Derby winner. Famous people include Dale Carnegie and a buncha people I never heard of.

The high school dates all the way back to 1847, with the Spoofhound mascot going back to 1923. Athletically, they’ve won 11 state championships, ranging from 1937 to 2020, and in 5 different sports. 

As for Spoofy … he looks kinda hot.

Spongers – Tarpon Springs (FL) High School

"Noun (derogatory, informal): a person who lives at other’s expense."

Either that or one of these guys:

Yup, that’s how we used to get our sponges. And Tarpon Springs was once a huge center for sponge diving. With sponges now being made from plastic (along with a devastating red tide in the 1940s), sponges are more just a tourist draw these days. 

What’s even more interesting about the town, though, is that those first sponge divers were all Greek. Indeed, the town is now known for its Greek cuisine, a Greek Orthodox cathedral, and a Greektown. It also has the highest percentage of Greeks of any town in the country. Yassou!

The city of 25,000 was only incorporated in 1887. Famous citizens include Gus Bilirikis (politician), Michael Koulianos (“preacher, writer and YouTuber”), and Themistocles Leftheris (Olympian). Non-Greeks include athletes, musicians, and the “former record holder of the longest coma.”

The high school was founded in 1905, though the actual school building is brand spanking new (and looks like a law office). Currently, there are almost 1,100 students. 

As for athletics, the school has no less than 74 teams. Now, that includes varsity, JV, and 9th grade for both sexes across 18 different sports. Pretty unbelievably, one of those is ice hockey!

And yes, they do have an on-field mascot – Rey the Sponge Diver:

Looks hot!

Slicers – LaPorte (IN) High School

I was assuming this came from a local reporter who wrote that the team “sliced and diced” their opponent. But I was wrong!

Instead, AI is telling me it “comes from the town's connection to the meat-slicing industry, particularly the Berkel Meat Slicer, which was invented by butcher Wilhelmus Adrianus van Berkel and manufactured in La Porte in the early 1900s.”

So, more corporate cringe, I guess. 

That’s unfortunate, as La Porte actually has a lot more going on than the Berkel Meat Slicer. For one, the city’s got over 21,000 people. For another, it’s also the home of the Advance-Rumely Company, makers of the Oil-Pull tractor engine. So, um, er ... Slicers it is!

La Porte’s in the northwest part of the state, on the Michigan border, and just east of Gary. It’s also known as the “Maple City.” So, maybe the Maple Leafs? You know, like the hockey team? In Canada somewhere?

They’ve got a ton of “notable people” on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, I’m only familiar with one of them. And that’s Belle Gunness, a female serial killer.

She killed all 3 – and many more

The high school is packed, with over 1,850 students. Interestingly, one of their alumni is the pretty famous Japanese-American artist and designer Isamu Noguchi. 

With such a large student body, it’s still surprising that they actually field 57 teams. How do they do that? Well, would you believe they’ve got 13 separate basketball teams (including JV, sophomore and varsity co-ed)?

I love it!