MaxPreps Mascot Mondays: Alaska high school mascots

MaxPreps Mascot Mondays is a weekly feature on an individual state's mascot stats and some interesting commentary. Check back each Monday in 2012 for another state, in alphabetical order

Just as important as a school's name and its location is its mascot. Options abound, and some teams go with the commonplace while others go with the truly unique.

In Alaska, there are 177 schools with mascots listed in the MaxPreps database. Listed below are the Top 16 most popular mascot names in Alaska, the mascot names that only one school owns and other mascot facts/stats:

HALF NATIVE + HALF SETTLER = HALFBREEDS
The people of Aniak have to take riverboats or planes to get to other cities and villages. Isolated more than 300 miles away from Anchorage, it's a place where the majority of the population is native Eskimo and because of the location, many in Aniak fish and hunt for food. And that brings us to the mascot name: Halfbreeds. A 2005 Associated Press story says that the origin of the mascot name is that white settlers bred with Yu-pik Eskimos many decades ago, and that despite qualms from people in other parts of America, Aniak takes pride in its mascot name.

IS IT IN RUSSIA OR THE UNITED STATES?
Looking at a map, it's hard to tell if Diomede is part of North America or Asia. It's on a little island smack in the middle of the Bering Strait, right between America and Russia. This location also sits right next to the International Date Line — less than a mile, in fact — thus the mascot Dateliners. No way any other school tries to pull off Dateliners as a mascot.


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SOME LIONS AND TIGERS ... BUT LOTS OF BEARS
Alaska is full of all kinds of bears, and so is the pool of mascot names associated with them. You've got 13 bear-themed mascots in Alaska: Bears (4), Brown Bears (1), Crimson Bears (1), Glacier Bears (1), Golden Bears (1), Grizzlies (2), Grizzly Bears (2) and King Polar Bears (1). Also, a Nanook (1) is from the Inuit language, meaning polar bear.

WILD ABOUT WOLVERINES
Alaska is known to have the most Wolverines compared with all other American states. That's probably why the Wolverine is the second-most popular mascot name in the state with 13. Only two other states, Iowa and Idaho, had the wolverine make the Top 15.

AWESOME ADJECTIVES
Arctic (1), Blue (1), Brown (1), Crimson (1), Glacier (1), Golden (1), Grizzly (1), Killer (1), King (2), Northern (2), Sea (1), Tundra (1) and Wolf (1). No other schools in America use Arctic, Glacier, King or Tundra as an adjective in their mascot names.

TOP 16 MOST POPULAR MASCOT NAMES
# Eagles 17
Wolverines 13
# Warriors 9
Wolves 9
Huskies 9
Lynx 8
Hawks 6
# Falcons 5
# Panthers 5
Bears 4 (There are 2 Grizzly Bears, 1 Brown Bears, 1 Crimson Bears, 1 Glacier Bears, 1 Golden Bears and 1 King Polar Bears)
Rams 4
Braves 3
# Cougars 3
Kings 3
# Knights 3 (There is 1 Arctic Knights)
Malemutes 3
# Denotes that mascot name is in America's Top 15

MASCOT NAMES USED BY ONLY 1 SCHOOL

*Archangels *Arctic Knights *Belugas Blackbirds Blazers Blue Jays *Brown Bears Buccaneers Bucks Bulldogs Chiefs Chieftains *Coasters

Comets *Crimson Bears *Dateliners *Glacier Bears Golden Bears *Halfbreeds *Harpooners Herders Hornets Hustlers Islanders *Jaegers Kardinals

*Killer Whales *King Polar Bears *King Salmon Mariners *Moose *Nanooks Nighthawks Patriots Raiders Ravens *Rookies *Sea Otters *Shaman

Spartans Stars Storm *Strivers Thunderbolts Trappers *Tundra Foxes Vikings *Warlords Whalers Wildcats *Wolf Wolf Pack

* Denotes that no other school in America has that mascot name

MASCOT STATS
Most popular mascot name is used by 9.6 percent of schools.
There are 79 different mascot names for 177 schools.
23 schools have mascot names that no other American school has.
Alaska's Top 16 features 6 of America's Top 15 mascot names.