I hope you enjoyed the past month of fiction as much as I had fun writing those pieces. Thanks again to Addison, Hallie, McKenzie, and Keira for their help! Now back to the world at large.
Recently, John Millea of the Minnesota State High School League ran a Mascot Challenge on Twitter. Millea is a wonderful part of the MSHSL and writes John’s Journal on their website as well as taking care of social media.
He put together a 64-team bracket of mascots from high schools across Minnesota. Much like the NCAA basketball tournament every March, Millea named his regions and seeded teams. The four regions were the Pretzels and Cheese region, the Pork Chop region, the #ThankARef region, and the #BeTheLightMN region, all related to ideas he covers regularly.
This was all in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down high school sports. Our own Panthers were never part of this fun since there are a number of schools in the state with Panthers as a mascot. Not as many as there are Tigers, though, with at least 12 schools having that nickname!
Voters turned out in droves for each round of action. For the entire tournament, over 87,000 votes were cast on Twitter! The finals had our rivals from down Highway 30, the Blooming Prairie Awesome Blossoms, facing off against the Moorhead Spuds. Almost 6800 people voted, and the Spuds edged the Blossoms by about 50 votes.
It was intense watching the polls Millea posted. Should I vote for the Flying Dutchmen or the Agates or the Mainstreeters or the Prowlers? How about the Nuggets or Lumberjacks or Rabbits or Otters? One thing is for sure: I know a lot more Minnesota high school mascots now!
When I was in high school at New Ulm Cathedral, we were the Greyhounds. It seemed ironic since we never had very fast teams. Every year at Homecoming, somebody would bring a couple of actual greyhounds to the football game, and after I left high school, they created a greyhound costume for someone to wear.
As I headed to Winona State, I had to become accustomed to being a Warrior. And not just a Warrior. According to the PA announcer, we were the Winning Warriors of Winona State University! And that was quite true as I saw a lot of successful teams in my tenure. At least one person who dressed up as the Warrior only used the head; he wore a sash across his bare chest along with the rest of the accouterments a warrior would wear.
And then I arrived at NRHEG. It didn’t take me long to learn that we hadn’t been Panthers for very long when I got here in 1996. Since my wife graduated from here, I learned how the two former districts, the Raiders and the Cardinals, joined first for spring sports and then for all sports in the late 80s and finally joined as a full district in 1990.
The students got to vote on what they wanted the new mascot to be. Michelle couldn’t remember what all the choices were, but she also had heard a conspiracy theory after she graduated that some people who counted the votes may have “missed” a few since they really wanted Panthers to win. True or not, it adds a little flavor to the story.
Mascots are important. They give a school an identity. Many schools have a fearsome mascot to strike fear into the opponents. Panthers and Tigers and Buccaneers and Raiders are formidable foes. But when you look at the two finalists in the MSHSL bracket, nobody’s going to be intimidated by a potato or a flower. Still, the mascots are part of the history of the community, and most people remember their hometown mascot fondly.
Mascots are also important when you see who you’re playing for Homecoming and need a theme. Playing a team like the Knights gives you many possibilities, and any bird like an Eagle can stimulate some good ideas. But what would you do if you played the Sauk Centre Mainstreeters? “Go shop somewhere else”?
I’ve probably announced “Your NRHEG Panthers” thousands of times over the years, whether it’s to introduce the team or give a score. It’s a fun mascot name to announce because the letters fit together well and lend themselves to a crescendo as you announce it. And I have fun when we get a non-traditional team over here to play. The St. Charles Saints played here for football one year, as did the Pipestone Arrows. That’s a nice change of pace from the (oh so) many times I get to say Rebels or Vikings.
Sometimes, I work on how to say other schools and their mascots in different ways. It’s important to recognize the pride they have in their school even if we hope to pound them in the contest that day. Throughout the mascot challenge, I’d try to substitute a different team name along with NRHEG other than Panthers. Nothing had the same feel. I’m happy to be a Panther and am glad this was the choice for NRHEG. Panther Nation!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is sansculotte, which means a radical or revolutionary, as in, “The sansculotte met a great deal of resistance when he suggested Blooming Prairie should change their mascot.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!