MaxPreps Mascot Mondays: Nevada high school mascots

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 Nevada, there are 98 schools with mascots listed in the MaxPreps database. Listed below are the Top 16 most popular mascot names in Nevada, the mascot names that only one school owns and other mascot facts/stats.

AMERICAN OR NATIVE AMERICAN?
Current athletes at Cheyenne (North Las Vegas) are too young to remember the Gulf War in 1990. Little do they know that their mascot name, the Desert Shields, is the same name as the coalition operation (led by America) that prevented Iraqi forces from overtaking Kuwait. The origin of this unique name is actually rooted in the history of the desert area. According to a piece in the Summerlin South View, a Desert Shield is also a Native American "physically and spiritually protective device made out of hides with 'visions' represented from a three-day spiritual name quest painted on them." The school was built in 1991, though, so there could very well be a little bit of each in the mascot name.

NON-NATIVE SPECIES
Never say never. While conventional wisdom would suggest that nobody would ever find a gator in Nevada, there are two stories that prove it is possible. The first one is that Green Valley (Henderson) chose Gators for its mascot name, so just find an athletic contest involving GVHS to see a Gator. The second one is just bizarre. A story in the Spring Valley View from 2009 showed that you can find an occasional gator in other spots: Wildlife Department officials found a 3-foot-long alligator in Sunset Park back then. The alligator is endemic to the Southeast, in states like Louisiana and Florida, not dry spots like Southern Nevada. Nevada only has one Gators, but Louisiana leads with 10 and Florida is second with nine.

CREEPY, CRAWLY CREATURES
It's safe to say that tarantulas outnumber people sometimes in Gabbs, a town of around 300 people located on lonely Highway 361. The locals pay homage to the creepy, venomous, hairy little creatures with the local high school's mascot name: the Tarantulas. Gabbs is said to have the largest migration of tarantulas in the world, according to Margie Klein of Desert USA, and considering that females produce between 500 and 1,000 eggs per mating and live 15-20 years, that means Gabbs has plenty of tarantulas passing through in the early fall. It's an annual pilgrimage that young males embark upon in search of mates - and it usually ends badly for the boys. After all, they have to go about 50 miles to reach their goal.

STAY UNIQUE, MINERAL COUNTY
You can only find one Serpents in America, and it comes from Mineral County (Hawthorne). What you won't find is much of an explanation. Is it Serpents, as in snakes, or Serpents, as in dragons? Maybe even some type of lake monster? From the looks of the school's website, they went all-in on dragon. If they had called it that, the folks in Mineral would have just become another Dragons in the database: 146. Staying unique with Serpents, we say, was a good call.

FIGHTING MUCKERS: OPTION NO. 3 WINS
You've got four options when it comes to figuring out what kind of Fighting Muckers they are at Tonopah. 1) The person who "mucks" the animal waste out of barn stables. 2) A journalist who digs deep and investigates, exposing truth. 3) Someone who shovels out broken ore or waste rock. 4) A British phrase meaning friend. We know option 4 won't work (Fighting Friends?). And we're obviously big fans of journalism at MaxPreps, but it's hard to imagine they had newspaper writers as their inspiration. And option 1? Ridiculous. So option 3 is the winner, and it makes the most sense when you look at the mascot image for the mining town's teams.

TOP 16 MOST POPULAR MASCOT NAMES
# Bulldogs 4
# Lions 4
# Eagles 4
# Mustangs 4
# Warriors 4
# Panthers 3
# Cougars 3
Railroaders 2
Rams 2
Spartans 2
Colts 2
# Falcons 2
Grizzlies 2
Jaguars 2
Longhorns 2
Muckers 2
# Denotes mascot name is in America's Top 15

MASCOT NAMES USED BY ONLY 1 SCHOOL

Aggies Bengals Bobcats Braves Broncos Buckaroos Chargers Cowboys Crusaders *Desert Shields Diamondbacks Dragons Dust Devils Gaels

Gators Greenwave Hawks Highlanders Hornets Huskies Indians Knights Lakers Lancers Leopards Lynx Miners Mountain Lions

Nighthawks Patriots Pilots Pioneers Pirates Raiders Rattlers Roadrunners Saints Senators *Serpents Sidewinders Skyhawks Sundevils

*Tarantulas Thunder Thunderbirds Tigers Trailblazers Trojans Vandals Vaqueros Vikings Wildcats Wolverines Wolves

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

MASCOT STATS
Most popular mascot name is used by 4.1 percent of schools.
There are 70 different mascot names for 98 schools.
3 schools have mascot names that no other American school has.
Nevada's Top 16 features 8 of America's Top 15 mascot names.