In Carbondale, Rocky Mountain Oysters are more than just an exotic menu item. In Alamosa, Mean Moose roam. In Holyoke, there are whispers of links to the Ku Klux Klan. Throughout Colorado, legends are woven into the banners hanging on gymnasium walls. Twenty-four high schools call themselves Eagles, but only Brush has the Beetdiggers and only Rocky Ford is the Meloneers.
A closer inspection makes for a colorful and, at times, controversial tapestry.
Flying in the face of political correctness, Lamar High School remains the Savages. But 15 years ago, Arvada junked the Redskins in favor of Reds. Now they’re the Bulldogs. In February, students from Denver’s South High School rallied for the school board to dump the Civil War “Johnny Rebel” logo that has represented the school for decades. South High will remain the Rebels, principal William Kohut said last week, but the logo will be changed. The Confederate soldier will be removed, replaced by an insignia based on the griffin built into the architecture outside the entrance of the building, constructed in 1925, near Washington Park.
“We are going to work on it over the summer,” Kohut said. “It will be changed for the next school year.”
Travel around the state and you’ll find Demons and Devils aplenty, but only one Angel. Aspen High School’s mascot is not, thankfully, the Paparazzi. Or the Celebrities. It is, appropriately, the Skiers.
The state’s oddest mascot resides in Carbondale, home to the Colorado Rocky Mountain School. It’s a private boarding school of 155 students situated on 300 acres of ranchland. The boys soccer team is called the Oysters; the girls is called the Pearls.
Allow Lisa Raleigh, the school’s director of communications, to explain.
“There were a lot of cattle farms in the area,” Raleigh said. “In the late ’60s or early ’70s, a local rancher brought Rocky Mountain oysters to the school and fried them up and served them to the students. The kids were told they were Rocky Mountain oysters. They got a kick out of it and the name stuck. Back then, around these parts, the school was just referred to as Rocky Mountain, so it became the Rocky Mountain Oysters, for the boys soccer team. When the girls started playing soccer, they became the Pearls.”
For the uninitiated, Rocky Mountain oysters (sometimes called prairie oysters) is a North American culinary name for edible offal, specifically buffalo, boar or bull testicles.
“If people aren’t from the West, they get kind of confused,” Raleigh said with a chuckle.
Klan connection?
In Holyoke, a ranching-and-farming community of about 2,200 people in the northeast corner of the state, the townsfolk rally around their Dragons. But they also wonder if there is a dark story behind their fire-snorting mascot.
The story goes that members of the Ku Klux Klan, which was active in the region in the 1920s, convinced local school officials to adopt the Dragon as the high school mascot — Dragon, as in Grand Dragon, the highest-ranking member of the KKK.
“It’s an urban legend around here, and I’ve heard people talk about it, but I don’t think anybody knows for sure,” said Mayor David Nygaard, who runs a chiropractic clinic in town.
Brenda Brandt, owner and publisher of the Holyoke Enterprise newspaper, also has heard the rumor. But a check of the paper’s archives did not prove the KKK had anything to do with the high school’s mascot.
“I found out that sometime in the 1920s the high school became the Dragons, but we haven’t found any reference as to why,” Brandt said.
Leeway in Lamar
There is no mystery in southeast Colorado, where the Lamar Savages still take to the playing fields about 50 miles from the site of the Sand Creek Massacre. It was there in 1864 that Col. John Chivington and his cavalry killed more than 150 Indians, most of them women and children. The school’s logo features a Native American in a full eagle-feather headdress.
“I know there was some controversy a few years ago, but we really don’t hear about it very often,” Lamar High athletic director Greg Eddy said.
Eddy was referring to the 2002 ruckus swirling around the Eaton High Reds, whose mascot remains a caricature of a defiant Indian with a misshapen nose, an eagle feather and a loincloth. That year, a University of Northern Colorado intramural basketball team, comprised of American Indians, Hispanics and Anglos, took the name “Fightin’ Whities” as a sharp political jab at Eaton.
There are still 11 high schools in Colorado using an Indian-inspired mascot, but Eddy said the Savages mascot is not a big deal around town, or at the school.
“I don’t think the kids really think about it because they have grown up here and it’s been here all of their lives,” he said.
Moose on the looseThere is no controversy in the heart of the San Luis Valley. But two basic questions arise: Do moose roam in Alamosa? And, are they really mean?
According to the Colorado Division of Wildlife, plenty of moose live in the San Juan Mountains near Creede, west of Alamosa. And it’s possible they wander into the San Luis Valley from time to time.
“A few years ago, we spotted three moose outside of town,” Alamosa principal Mark Meyer said. “The whole town got pretty excited. There was a picture on the front page of the local paper.”
As for the origin of the nickname Mean Moose, Meyer offers this: “There have been tales circulating for years regarding the relationship of the school color, maroon, and the moose mascot. One tale supposes that a young moose, a female moose, or an old moose may be referred to as a ‘maroon’ due to the color of the fur. Another tale refers to an ancient ancestor of today’s moose — supposedly called a Maroon — that stood taller than, and was fiercer than, the modern moose, and had deep maroon-colored fur.”
But what of the modern beast’s temperament?
“Actually, moose can be quite belligerent,” said Denver Post outdoors writer Charlie Meyers, who once spent a few anxious minutes watching an angry moose swim toward him.
Devil of a timeAt Denver’s East High, the Angels have a long tradition of heavenly hoops. Saints play football at Jefferson High and run track at Vail Christian. But around Colorado, devils and demons are more abundant, with eight schools represented by pitchforks and horns. Some logos, such as Eagle Valley’s, are cutely devilish. But Glenwood Springs’ demon is, well, demonic looking.
“In your wildest dreams, you can’t conjure up the notion about us being evil,” Glenwood High principal Paul Freeman said when asked whether the school feels any religious heat for its mascot. “We think it’s a fun image that lends itself to heated competition. But we have been the Demons for a very, very long time, so there is a tremendous amount of tradition there.”
Plus, Freeman said, there are some solid, geological reasons for the mascot.
“From what I’ve been told, the name Demons came from the underground hot springs and the scene of all the steam and mists wafting through the fissures in the ground, from the underworld,” Freeman said. “As far as anybody can work it out, that is the origin of the name.
“It’s a good story, nonetheless.”
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
A uniquely Colorado mascot resides in Rocky Ford, an agricultural oasis of about 4,000 people in southeastern Colorado. That’s where you’ll find the Meloneers.
The mascot was born on April 16, 1923, when it was chosen by the Rocky Ford High student body. The school newspaper was already called “The Meloneer” and the annual was called “Le Cantaloupe.” Calling the football team the Meloneers, apparently, was better than calling it the Cantaloupes.
“The original colors were crimson and gold,” Rocky Ford athletic director Chuck Smithey said. “The red of the Meloneer stands for the juicy filling inside a luscious watermelon and the gold stands for the golden rind on the cantaloupe.”
According to Smithey, the melon-man mascot — a tough, angry-looking melon outfitted in red athletic shorts — was the brainchild of wrestling coach Ron Nordin, and was designed by school counselor Judy Quiller in the mid-1960s.
“You could visit every town in this country and you’d find lots of tigers, lions, bears, grizzlies or some other type of barbaric animal as school mascots,” Smithey said. “But you could look throughout this entire United States and there would be no other Meloneers.”
Most popular
Common mascots in Colorado:
1. Eagles (24)
2. Bulldogs (17)
3. Panthers (14)
4. Tigers (14)
5. Mustangs (13)
Angels vs. Demons
There is just one school, Denver East, with an angel mascot.
Two schools, Jefferson and Vail Christian, are called the Saints.
There are eight named Devils or Demons.
No-brainers
For some high schools, the choice was obvious:
Lyons Lions
Bear Creek Bears
Aspen Skiers
Roosevelt Roughriders
Creede, Telluride and Trinidad Miners
Clear Creek Golddiggers
Steamboat Sailors
Air Academy Kadets
