By: Daniel Holladay
Hello, again Missouri Western. In the last post, I spoke of several interesting mascots from various high schools. I asked questions like, why would you choose that? But then it dawned on me, why did we choose the Griffon as our mascot? With the help of Jackie Burns and our librarians, I found a yearbook entry from 1923. This yearbook tells a metaphorical story of why the Griffon came to MWSU. “Junior College needed a griffon to guard the ‘dreams’ that their 'treasurers of high ideals and hopes…meant someday to realize,'" Frances Flanagan writes in Missouri Western State College: A History 1915-83. This sounds nice, but I still wondered: why a Griffon? Mythical beasts such as dragons or phoenixes would make splendid guardians as well. According to Flanagan, there is actually a very good reason. A student from the class of 1918 by the name of Norman Knight chose the Griffon because it is the "[m]ythical guardian of buried treasure...” The first things that came to mind when I heard 'buried treasure' were pirates. But, that was definitely not where Knight was going with this. He believed that “education is a buried treasure obtainable only through hard ‘digging.'” So, we got the guardian of buried treasure to ‘protect’ those who wished to work hard to unearth an education. which is awesome if you think about it.
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By Daniel Holaday
I was thinking about some things this weekend while I was preparing to write this blog. To be more specific, I was thinking about the different mascots and team names that we give ourselves in schools. I have gone from being a Husky, to a Trojan, then I became an Eagle before bearing the moniker of a Monarch. Now, I call myself a Griffon. Aside from the title of Monarch (which can be defined as a king or a butterfly), I believe that all of my school mascots have been pretty awesome. The thought occurred to me that others may not have been so lucky, and that’s when I decided to google the worst school mascots. On the Buzzfeed article, "25 High School Mascots That'll Make You Say 'Wait, What?'," it was apparent that some school founders might have benefited from the creative help of writers. Before I get started pulling names out of a list of 25, I don’t think these are bad names or mascots. I just find that they don’t carry the same weight as when someone says, “Here come the Griffons!” For reasons of common immaturity, I’m going to start and say the Cornjerkers made my top five. Coming in fourth place, we have a team named the Poca Dots, yeah, their mascot is a Polka Dot… In third place, the Kewpies. Their mascot is a baby, which is sure to incite fear from the other team. Following in second, we have the Nimrods. They literally named themselves idiots by common understanding. And my first place pick out of this list, the Zizzers. It’s not even a word, come on people. |
AuthorDaniel Holaday is the blog writer for Canvas, Missouri Western State University's literary journal. Archives
April 2018
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