High School Mascot Mergers....

[B-Rich]

In today's local newspaper, there was an interesting article about the end of two local girls' Catholic high schools, Immaculata and Archbishop Blenk. The schools are being combined into one new school, Academy of Our Lady. What makes it interesting and pertinent to this board is the new mascot-- the schools combined the black and white Panda from Immaculata and the avian Dove from Blenk to come up with a new mascot-- the Penguin. No word yet on color schemes....

It got me thinkin'; I know of several combination instances regionally and locally, and each seems to have been carried out a little differently:

-- Way back in the early 80's, Gulfport (MS) (blue and white, the Commodores)and Gulfport East (orange and white, Vikings) merged and added a new nautical mascot, the Admiral (blue and orange). By the way, this was where Chris Jackson (Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf) played his prep basketball.

--This coming year, the two catholic high schools in Gulfport and Biloxi (Mercy Cross and St. John High schools) are merging into a new facility named St. Patrick Catholic. The new nickname is more evocative of the school name (Fighting Irish) rather than the previous two nicknames (Crusaders and Eagles).

-- This year, three former high schools in Plaquemines Parish, LA that were hard hit by Katrina (Port Sulphur, Boothville-Venice, and Buras) were merged into one school, South Plaquemines High. Rather then keep one of the previous nicknames (Bronchos, Oilers or Wildcats) the kids chose a new name reflecting why they were put together in the first place-- "Hurricanes".

Anyother interesting examples or instances out there?

[ShlyKBMT]

In today's local newspaper, there was an interesting article about the end of two local girls' Catholic high schools, Immaculata and Archbishop Blenk. The schools are being combined into one new school, Academy of Our Lady. What makes it interesting and pertinent to this board is the new mascot-- the schools combined the black and white Panda from Immaculata and the avian Dove from Blenk to come up with a new mascot-- the Penguin. No word yet on color schemes....

It got me thinkin'; I know of several combination instances regionally and locally, and each seems to have been carried out a little differently:

-- Way back in the early 80's, Gulfport (MS) (blue and white, the Commodores)and Gulfport East (orange and white, Vikings) merged and added a new nautical mascot, the Admiral (blue and orange). By the way, this was where Chris Jackson (Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf) played his prep basketball.

--This coming year, the two catholic high schools in Gulfport and Biloxi (Mercy Cross and St. John High schools) are merging into a new facility named St. Patrick Catholic. The new nickname is more evocative of the school name (Fighting Irish) rather than the previous two nicknames (Crusaders and Eagles).

-- This year, three former high schools in Plaquemines Parish, LA that were hard hit by Katrina (Port Sulphur, Boothville-Venice, and Buras) were merged into one school, South Plaquemines High. Rather then keep one of the previous nicknames (Bronchos, Oilers or Wildcats) the kids chose a new name reflecting why they were put together in the first place-- "Hurricanes".

Anyother interesting examples or instances out there?

I seem to remember a school in Lake Charles, LA. I think it was the Washington Chargers (Black and Gold) combined with the Marion Indians (Green and Gold) to become the Washington-Marion Charging Indians (Black, Green and Gold)

[sc49erfan15]

I'd never really given the thought to merging/closing schools...mainly due to the fact that they're opening new schools like crazy around here.

The only instance I can come up with was in 1970, when the schools in my county were integrated. (Yes, that's a full 16 years after Brown v. BOE ...and the case friggin' originated in South Carolina...)

The white school was Rock Hill High (Bearcats, garnet and black) while the black school was Emmett Scott High (Rattlers, navy and gold). In 1970, the schools were integrated, Emmett Scott was closed and a new high school (Northwestern High) was opened. No name changes, but both schools adopted gold into their color scheme to reflect Emmett Scott's past, as Rock Hill now wears garnet, black, and gold, and Northwestern (Trojans) is purple and gold.

[Sodboy13]

Unfortunately, when my high school district merged its two schools' sports programs due to budget cuts my senior year, they took their inspiration from a strongly sarcastic bit of editorial I wrote for the school paper.

And so, the Bloom High School Trojans and Bloom Trail High School Blazers were merged to create the Bloom Township Blazing Trojans, which is what they are to this day. I should have copyrighted that abomination the minute I wrote it.

Oh, and the newspaper got scrapped in the budget cuts.

[DrBear]

In his book Hoosiers about Indiana high school ball (you needen't ask what kind of ball), Phillip M. Hoose relates this story:

A merger among three small schools was going OK until they got to the team nickname. The three schools were the Blazers, Blue Devils and Burros. They went around for a while until a genius got up and shouted "I've got it! We'll call them the Blazing Blue Asses!"

[Bleujayone]

Hmmmm, A Catholic school with the mascot called the Penguins. For some reason I'm thinking back to The Blues Brothers to the nun Jake & Elwood called "The Penguin"

Sister Mary Stigmata aka "The Penguin"

Maybe the logo could be a nun in the same pose as Notre Dame's Fighting Irish leprechaun wielding a yardstick ruler.

[illwauk]

Anyone in the Milwaukee area know the story of the Brown Deer Falcons? I know it has something to do with Milwaukee and Brown deer annexing a nearby town and taking that town's HS nickname or something along those lines...

[Conns09]

for a while in eastern montana there were two small schools that combined for football only it was the belfry bats and the roberts rockets and they made the belfry-roberts thunder and there fight song was thunderstruck

[footballfiji]

Not a merger, but when UNLV became and school and broke off from UN-Reno they decided to choose a name to reflect their seceding from their brother school up north so they became the "Rebels" and even had the stars and bars on some of their helmets. Also their original mascot (a cartoon wolf) was another part of ther rebellion against the larger "Wolf Pack"

[HarperK]

Eagles+Lions=Griffons/Gryphons/Griffins

[winghaz]

Co-ops are big here in North Dakota, and at times you've seen the merging of nicknames. For example, the Grand Forks Central Knights and the Grand Forks Red River Roughriders co-op for girls hockey and have the nickname of KnightRiders.

I've told this embarassing story before about my hometown, Wing, when it started co-opping with our former arch-rival, Tuttle. Wing was called the Royals and Tuttle was called the Trojans. For the first year of the co-op, the teams were called the Royal Trojans.

After much embarassment that first year, they became the Wildcats.

[Billy B]

There are two schools I know of that did this. Morton East and West have one athletic team They are the Mustangs and one of the schools was maroon and the other was green, so now the colors are maroon and green. Possibly the worst color combination I can think of. Leyden East and West merged into one school and they took the Eagles nickname from one and the colors, blue and gold, from the other school.

[cubbies06]

I did a double-take when I saw the topic , Rich , because I live TWO BLOCKS from Immaculata (CC hits close to home!).To add even more mystery , the accompanying grade school, Immacuate Conception has a Charger for the mascot. No rhyme or reason on the choice of Penguins. I like the nun/pengiun analogy , but the nuns at Immaculata dress in predominantly white. When I attended all-male Shaw High School , we would ride by Immaculata only to be chased off by what we called "THE STORMTROOPERS"