Looking Back at the Best from 13 Years of ‘Unusual Nicknames’

In the January 2010 edition of High School Today, a brand-new segment entitled “Unusual Nicknames” appeared in a peach-colored box in the bottom-right corner of page 7. Since that debut, which featured a short profile of the Savannah (Georgia) Sol C. Johnson High School Atom Smashers, the column has become a staple of the magazine’s “Quick Hits” section, providing each issue with a dose of colorful high school history. With this month’s writeup on the Rhinelander (Wisconsin) High School Hodags, our collection of Unusual Nicknames totals 102 installments, with schools from 38 states having shared the spotlight.

Packed with tradition, uniquity and oftentimes humor, the stories behind these peculiar surname selections have made “Unusual Nicknames” a fan favorite among HST readers both inside and outside the walls of the NFHS. With that mind, we set out to compile a “Top 10” from the past 13 years – a celebration of the best of the best as the series becomes a teenager.

To determine the top 10, we polled the NFHS staff, asking them to choose 10 of their personal favorites from a list of 20 of our most memorable entries. The 10 most popular monikers are ranked in descending order below, with the schools that finished tied for second, fifth and seventh places listed alphabetically.

#10: Cairo (Georgia) High School Syrupmakers, September 2019
Located in southwest Georgia about 15 miles from the Florida state line, the city of Cairo is nicknamed the ‘Syrup City’ due to the large quantities of cane syrup produced there in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries. While this fact offers a simple explanation for how the Cairo High School student-athletes became known as the Syrupmakers and the Syrupmaids, there is more to it than that. In fact, Cairo may have a different nickname had one local syrup company not helped the football team out of a sticky situation.

It is said that Cairo once played a football game in a torrential downpour, and the rainfall was so fierce that employees from the Roddenberry Syrup Company – the most prominent syrup manufacturer in town – brought rain jackets down to the field for the players to wear. Out of gratitude for providing the jackets, which were emblazoned with “Roddenberry’s Syrup” on the back, the school began calling the football team “the Syrupmakers,” and the association has remained ever since.

In 1994, the first-ever Syrupmaker mascot costume – a giant syrup pitcher – made its debut and subsequently became a fixture at football games and pep rallies.

Cairo has received numerous accolades for its Syrupmakers moniker, as ESPN recognized it as the No. 1 nickname for a high school mascot in 1986, Bleacher Report selected it as the top sobriquet in the state of Georgia in 2008, and Sports Illustrated named it the best in the country in 2009.

#7 (tied): Sandy Jordan (Utah) High School Beetdiggers, October 2013
Much like the Cairo Syrupmakers, Jordan High School – based in Sandy, Utah – adopted its Beetdiggers nickname based on the commodity that once drove the town’s economy, sugar beet farming, as the school used to be surrounded by large sugar beet fields. Prior to 1950, sugar beet production was so vital that JHS and other area schools cancelled one to two weeks of classes every October to allow students to work on their family farms during the harvest season.

The industry no longer exists in the region and hasn’t for quite some time, but that hasn’t stopped some Jordan students from taking part in a truly radical tradition.

As recently as 1997, the school’s student body officers traveled to Idaho beet farms to chop the tops off of beets and eat them – a practice known as “topping” – as a symbol of their dedication to their duties. Topping is still a huge part of the culture at JHS, though the activity now includes school administrators and teachers joining the newly-elected student leaders in taking a bite of the beets, which are brought to the school instead.

“Digger Dan,” Jordan’s Beetdigger mascot, first appeared in the 1955 yearbook as a cartoon character named “Topper.” The class of 1986 changed the mascot’s name and created Digger Dan’s first costume as part of a class initiative.

Jordan’s highest honor, one that is typically reserved for distinguished alumni and retiring faculty members, is the presentation of a laser-engraved sugar beet knife.

#7 (tied): Kaukauna (Wisconsin) High School Galloping Ghosts, October 2015
When it comes to how Kaukauna (Wisconsin) High School’s (KHS) athletic teams came to be known as the Galloping Ghosts, there are two equally accepted origin stories listed on the Kaukauna Public Library’s website. Both of them date to the early 1920s, and both are associated with speed on the football field.

One story credits a local sportswriter with the first reference to the Kaukauna football team as “ghosts,” as he predicted a victory over Appleton High School. The writer’s notion was that Kaukauna’s lighter, faster ballcarriers would be able to “trample” Appleton with their speed.

The other account revolves around former Kaukauna football coach “Tiger” Bill Smith and his lofty regard for superstar NFL running back Harold “Red” Grange, who himself was nicknamed The Galloping Ghost because of his tremendous speed. Smith wanted his running backs to emulate Grange’s elusiveness and competitive spirit and called them his “galloping ghosts,” believing that though they were small in stature, they could be effective with their quickness. Similar to the first story, a journalist later wrote of how Kaukauna’s backfield had “rightly earned the name of ‘Galloping Ghosts’” as they presumably led the team to a win.

Both stories also mention a “phantom horse and rider” – thought to be a student who cloaked himself and his steed in white sheets – that stormed onto the field to present the game ball to the referees. This event, which happened prior to a game in the 1940s, helped cement Kaukauna’s Galloping Ghost legacy.

#7 (tied): Speedway (Indiana) High School Sparkplugs, April 2022
If you’re a fan of IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500, “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” you’re already well aware of the location and namesake of Speedway, Indiana. And with such an engrained racing tradition – the town was literally laid out around the original racetrack built in 1909 – it only makes sense that Speedway High School’s (SHS) athletics mascot fits the theme.

The high school, tucked into the shadows of the colossal Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) about seven miles west of the State Capitol, adopted the “Sparkplugs” moniker in the early 1940s after a naming contest held for the school’s basketball team. It was during this contest that SHS student Jim Kellam – an eventual graduate with the class of 1941 – submitted his Sparkplugs suggestion alongside a few “pretty ordinary” entries offered by some of the teachers.

At one point while deliberations were ongoing, Kellam seized an opportunity to defend his submission in front of his peers. When the topic arose, he was sitting in the classroom of a teacher who was obstinate that her proposal – the Trojans – should be the school’s new nickname. His response, “an engine can’t run without a sparkplug,” is largely credited with rallying support for the Sparkplugs option, cementing Speedway’s place in the conversation among the nation’s most unique nicknames.

Speedway’s four elementary schools also pay homage to the town’s time-honored mega-event, as they are named after the four founders of IMS – Carl G. Fisher, James A. Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler.

#5 (tied): Moorhead (Minnesota) High School Spuds, November 2020
Butted up against the North Dakota border, Moorhead is the largest city in the northwest region of Minnesota with more than 40,000 residents. Many of them take a great deal of pride in the area’s rich history of potato farming, and one of the town’s early high school sites was even located on former potato farmland.

Those two factors formed the basis for Moorhead High School adopting the nickname “Spuds” sometime between 1918 and 1922. The introduction of a mascot, a large smiling potato named “Spuddy,” followed shortly thereafter, and was adopted by schools throughout the district in 2004.

In October 2020, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) recognized the Moorhead Spuds as the best high school nickname in the state, winners of a head-to-head bracket-style competition powered by more than 87,000 total votes on social media. The contest, known as the Mascot Nickname Challenge, was started by MSHSL media specialist John Millea in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and featured a field of 64 unique high school nicknames from throughout The North Star State. The Spuds defeated the Blooming Prairie High School Awesome Blossoms – a name that narrowly missed the cut for this article – after receiving 50.4 percent of the 6,872 ballots tallied in the final vote. Millea even traveled to Moorhead to present the Spud faithful with a commemorative award during halftime of a football game.

#5 (tied): Watersmeet (Michigan) Township School Nimrods, January 2015
Watersmeet, Michigan, a town of roughly 1,400 residents on the western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is the only known place in America where people are celebrated for being Nimrods. Based on today’s definition, it may seem like Watersmeet Township School (WTS) administrators were insulting their student-athletes when they adopted “the Nimrods” nickname in 1904, but in reality, they had something much different in mind.

The intent was to honor Nimrod the biblical character, the son of Cush and great-grandson of Noah, who is described as a king and a mighty, skilled hunter, or “king hunter.” Nimrod’s hunting prowess, combined with the essential role that hunting plays in the Upper Peninsula’s culture, is thought to be the rationale behind Watersmeet’s moniker. The school logo, which depicts a bearded man in a coonskin hunting cap, also supports this line of thinking.

Drawn to the tremendous irony and humor behind the Nimrod name, an ESPN film crew traveled to Watersmeet to film a series of commercials for its “Without Sports” collection. The commercials, which aired on the network in late 2003 and early 2004, featured the now-famous tag line, “Without sports, who would cheer for the Nimrods?”

The Nimrods’ rise in popular culture also caught the attention of actor and champion of Native American issues Robert Redford, who then produced an eight-part documentary entitled Nimrod Nation in Watersmeet, which focused on the school’s student body and its large Native American population.

#4: Hoopeston Area (Illinois) High School Cornjerkers, February 2013
There aren’t many high schools in the world that could rightfully call themselves “the Cornjerkers,” but Hoopeston Area (Illinois) High School, located in the “Sweet Corn Capital of the World,” is certainly one of them. The Cornjerkers moniker pays homage to the centuries- old tradition of sweet corn farming in Hoopeston, dating to the days before modern harvesting machinery when corn had to be physically hand-picked, or “jerked,” from each stalk.

Cornjerking was a common practice in the 1920s, so much so that team buses would often have to delay leaving for away games during the fall as some players would still be out in the fields picking corn. During one such instance, Bob Poisall, a sportswriter for the Commercial-News in nearby Danville who rode the bus to games, grew impatient as the bus sat idle and complained that they would never leave for the game waiting on a “bunch of cornjerkers.” Hoopeston’s coach at that time, Glenn Brasel, began using the term for his teams over his 20-plus years at the helm, and the rest is history.

An ear of corn first appeared on Hoopeston’s team uniforms in 1930, and later evolved into an official Cornjerker mascot, “Jerky,” a walking ear of corn. Dick Hobbs, the HHS basketball coach and athletic director at the time, conceptualized and created Jerky, which made its first appearance in 1963. Jerky has become so popular over the years that memorabilia bearing the mascot’s likeness continues to sell nationwide.

#2 (tied): Cobden (Illinois) High School Appleknockers, November 2022
Although it doesn’t have an agricultural “specialty” akin to Georgia’s reputation for growing peaches or Florida’s traditional crop of oranges, Illinois is an agricultural powerhouse in its own right thanks to its varied climate zones and soil types. According to a 2016 report from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), The Land of Lincoln ranked among the leading states in the country for soybeans (No. 1), pumpkins (No. 1), horseradish (No. 1), corn (No. 2) and peaches (No. 10).

The ISBE’s data also listed the state at No. 19 for harvesting apples, with a healthy portion of those coming from the Shawnee Hills region of southern Illinois, the state’s apple orchard epicenter. Tucked into those hills is the small town of Cobden, which chose to embrace the area’s agricultural staple by adopting the “Appleknockers” as the nickname for the athletic teams at Cobden High School (CHS).

A confirmed timeline of when and why Cobden became the Appleknockers does not exist, but one of the most popular versions of the backstory dates to the school winning a boys basketball sectional championship in the 1940s. At the time, Cobden’s title was a bit of a shocker, as the program did not have a history of success and the team didn’t even have its own gymnasium. As a reaction to the victory, someone from an opposing school remarked, “whoever heard of a bunch of Appleknockers winning such a thing;” and the name stuck.

#2 (tied): Poca (West Virginia) High School Dots, March 2010
Quite possibly the best-fitting nickname in the country, the naming of Poca (West Virginia) High School as “the Dots” was set in motion in 1922 when the community of “Pocatalico” decided to adopt the shorter “Poca” (pronounced POE-kuh) as its official name. Pocatalico District High School (PDHS) was changed to Poca High School in a corresponding move, which also spurred town leaders to seek a new school nickname to replace the PDHS “Indians.”

The most popular tale goes that Poca High School began calling itself the Dots in 1928 at the suggestion of a Charleston Gazette reporter who believed the name would make a big splash from a marketing standpoint.

His hunch turned out to be a stroke of brilliance that almost certainly created waves larger than he could have imagined. These days, a list of unique high school nicknames cannot be made without including the Poca Dots, as outlets such as ESPN, Sports Illustrated and MaxPreps have all crowned it as the best in the country over the years.

And while the nickname itself is top-tier, the Poca Dot mascot, which has its own Twitter account operated by 1990s PHS alumni, takes it to another level. While early iterations of “The Dot” featured a simple design, the costume has since taken on a more intimidating persona, complete with intense, bloodshot eyes, an angry sneer, and drawn-on arm and leg muscles.

#1: The Webb School (Bell Buckle, Tennessee) Feet, March 2014
When you enter a high school gym, many times you see a mascot with a large head as the dominant part of the costume. That’s not quite the case for The Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. When you walk into The Webb School’s gym, a dominant figure standing in the bleachers is an oversized foot to represent the Webb Feet.

The Webb School was founded in 1870 by William Robert Webb, who was known by many as “Old Sawney” in rural Culleoka, Maury County, Tennessee. The founder became the first principal of the school, which admitted female, Native American and Asian-American students. Webb’s brother, John Maurice Webb, served as co-principal. After the two brothers passed away, Sawney’s son, W. R. “Son Will” Webb, Jr. took over as principal. Teamed with his brother, Son Will created the Webb tradition, which helped The Webb School become one of America’s most distinguished secondary schools.

A century after its beginning, another tradition lived on throughout The Webb School. Intramurals were a dominant part of the school, as it was the only option for students. With numerous teams participating, names were needed, and one team decided on the Feet, thinking it was funny. Little did the team know, the name would become a tradition that would stick with the school for more than 40 years.

Students can be seen carrying out that tradition by competing to wear the mascot outfit – a large navy-blue foot with the word “Webb” in large yellow letters.