There are a lot of interesting and unique high school mascots in Wisconsin, some of which take a little research to understand.
The staff at OnFocus Sports was wondering — which high school mascot is the most unique in Wisconsin? After much arguing here in the office, we have decided to let you, our readers, decide.
What better way to fight it out than with a NCAA tournament style bracket? Each day, we will present a new match-up for you to vote on. The winner in each day’s poll will advance to the next level. After the voting is done, our readers will help us determine the most unique mascot in the state.
There were a few schools that didn’t quite make the cut, starting with the Aquinas High School Blugolds. While a one-off mascot at the high school level, there’s also the UW-Eau Claire Blugolds. Except for two specific circumstances, we did not include teams that shared mascot names with an existing college or professional program in the state.
Next up were a few unique animals that did not make the cut. These were the Oconomowoc Racoons, Tri-County Penguins, Fall Creek Crickets, and Siren Dragons, just to name a few. We love all animal mascots, but the rest on the list just overwhelmed the unique animals.
And finally, we cut out any mascots which were different only by the choice of color in their name. While Adams-Friendship is the only Green Devils in the state, there are also two Red Devils (Green Bay East and Kenosha Bradford) and five Blue Devils (Evansville, Lodi, Milwaukee North, Oconto, Plum City).
Drummond also deserves a mention, as they are the only school in the state to have a mascot name that changes based on the gender of the athletes: the Lumberjacks or the Lumberjills.
So that left us with 32 mascots covering 34 schools. Check back tomorrow (July 31, 2019) as we start with the first match-up: the 1 seed Mellen Granite Diggers against the 16 seed Papermakers, from Nekoosa and Kimberly.
