America, a great injustice has been done. The best mascot in Georgia was only voted as the third best, and it wasn’t even close to the top two.
The mascot in question, to Prep Rally’s reckoning, is the Clarkston (Ga.) High Angoras. For the initiated who didn’t grow up on a farm or move into the fashion industry, Angoras are a type of sheep. They produce Angora wool, which is then used to make sweaters, blankets, you name it.
The Angoras are a great mascot, for multiple reasons. It’s obscure and unique. It’s genuinely odd. Perhaps most importantly, it has a genuine historical reason for being the school’s mascot; Clarkston was originally called Goatsville. The Goatsville Angoras. Perfect.
Yet, the Angoras weren’t deemed perfect by the voters. In fact, they weren’t even deemed closest to perfect by those Americans who weighed in to USA Today’s best mascot contest. Instead, they finished third in the state of Georgia, far behind the Red Elephants of Gainesville (Ga.) High.
Please don’t get Prep Rally wrong. A red elephant is a great mascot all its own, particularly because of the odd tacked-on color reference. Still, it’s no Anogora. Neither are the Jefferson (Ga.) Dragons, a mascot simply chosen by the student body. There aren’t a lot of Dragons, but there are plenty more Dragons than Angoras.
Georgia how could you? Thou hath turned your back on a truly beautiful mascot, and this isn’t the last we’ll all hear about it. Mark our words, America: The Angoras will rise again, even if they no longer play in Goatsville.
Other Great Georgia Mascots of Note:
The Red Elephants are pretty great, thanks to a local sports writer of the 1930s. Yet Georgia has one other fantastic and unique mascot, too:
The Johnson (Ga.) High Atom Smashers. They’re the only Atom Smashers in the country, and according to USA Today were even featured as part of a Jeopardy question at one point. That’s a sure sign of a great mascot. Yet, if they needed to top it all off, they were given the one thing that could seal the deal in 1962: The bronze arm of an actual atom smasher.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is true mascot heritage. All schools should be so lucky.
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