Savage Words: Lynx, you’re one of a kind

Another school year has come to a close, and we’re bidding a fond farewell to a host of Lynx.

Lynx.

What a cool mascot name. Brandon Valley is the only school in the state with that name. It’s also one of only a handful of schools whose mascot doesn’t end in an ‘S’.

There are a couple others, but it’s so tough to tell anymore as high schools in our rural state consolidate faster than wind speeds across the plains each spring.

Sisseton and Woonsocket are the Redmen/Lady Redmen, Lakota Tech is home to the Tatanka(Lakota for Buffalo), Lower Brule and Wakpala are both the Sioux, and Tiospa Zina High School athletes are called Wambdi(Lakota for Eagle). 

The consolidation realignments each year makes it tough to keep track of it all. You need an abacus some years to decipher which schools are which when tournament time creeps up in Class B each year. Northwestern High School in Mellette – a single high school – consists of kids that used to make up a conference! Students at Northwestern come from Conde, Cresbard, Brentford, Athol, and others. Those all used to be separate teams competing against each other. Now, it’s one school.

It seems like every fall, when football and volleyball roll around, there’s a new school that pops up, which is actually the culmination of many others. There are 186 current high schools in South Dakota competing in athletics. But there are also 192 that are no longer. 

Some of those now-defunct high schools had some of the greatest mascot names. Tell me you’ve heard of a better one than Quinn, located six miles east of Wall. Quinn’s mascot was the Tuplets. The Quinn Tuplets might possibly be the greatest mascot name ever.

There’s another worth mentioning, but it’s about 1,100 east of Brandon. Poca, West Virginia has a great mascot name. Poca is known as the Dots. Can you imagine a Friday Night Lights gridiron contest between the Quinn Tuplets and the Poca Dots?

Although 192 of them are now gone, South Dakota still has several current unique mascot names. Gregory is known as the Gorillas, only the second school in the country with such a mascot name. The other is Pittsburg State University in Kansas.

Rapid City Central is known as the Cobblers. A Cobbler is a shoemaker, and although Central’s mascot is indeed a little fella hammering on a shoe, the name actually originated as a tribute to former coach and athletic director Euclid Cobb, who began in Rapid City in 1920. For as interesting as that is, the mascot is the only in South Dakota named after a person, and it’s believed to be only the second in the country. The NFL’s Cleveland Browns are named after original head coach and co-founder Paul Brown.

Sioux Falls’ newest school, Jefferson, also has an interesting story. Although the Cavaliers name isn’t terribly unique, landing on the name is. Jefferson is obviously named after President Thomas Jefferson, who also founded the University of Virginia in 1819. Virginia is named the Cavaliers, and so Jefferson in Sioux Falls followed suit.

Next time you’re at an event with someone from Mitchell, throw this little nugget at them: The Mitchell Kernels aren’t named after a kernel of corn, or the Corn Palace. According to a book about South Dakota mascot names written by Jerry Miller, John Papendick and George Kiner, the Kernels got their mascot name when the school couldn’t afford uniforms. Money was eventually donated by a man named Kernel. That’s a tough one to imagine, but according to history books, that’s the case.

Of the 186 high schools still in existence in South Dakota, Tigers is the most common mascot name with 12. Eagles is next with eight.

But there’s only one Lynx.

So recent Brandon Valley grads, go out and do good. And remember, you’re one of a kind. 

That goes for mascot names, and from the number of you I’ve interacted with over the years, it also applies to the fine adults you’ve become.

Good luck.