Kentucky’s Weird High School Nicknames
First off, I realize Gritty, the scream yourself awake nightmare mascot for the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers is an odd jumping off point for my blog, but hang with me.
Over the weekend, Mom and Dad and I were discussing old Kentucky school athletic nicknames and mascots. There have been some weird ones and ones that, well, may not be politically correct in 2019. That could be a whole other post, so we'll move on.
Dad loves-loves-loves talking about high school sports, so much that he pulled up the KHSAA website the other day and asked us to name the nickname/mascot for EVERY SINGLE high school. Yeah, the new and old nickname discussion got skewed along the way.
There's a book out called the Kentucky High School Basketball Encyclopedia: 100th Anniversary Edition and it has all the stats, history, etc you could ever think of through 2017, including nicknames.
Now around here, we have standard nicknames/mascots like Panthers, Eagles, Mustangs, Cougars, Wildcats, Bears, mostly animal-related. But have you ever heard of a Peacock (Smithfield) Wasps (Floyd County's Wayland) or Blue Terrors (Marion)? Somerset has the Briar Jumpers and Bracken County? The Polar Bears
Here's one from my neck of the woods in Ohio County. When McHenry still had a school, they were the Merrimacks which Dad described as a sprite or fairy. Weird, right?
Don't forget to vote for your favorite high school mascot in Western Kentucky HERE, voting ends Sunday night, February 24th at 11:59:59 p.m. The winners will be announced Monday morning and WBKR will broadcast live from winning school.
And if you ever figure out what Gritty is, let me know.