Colorado: The land of remarkable mascots, with Golddiggers, fried testicles and Meloneers
It isn’t often that Prep Rally publicly disagrees with America, but in this case we have to. America, you’re wrong about the best mascot in the state of Colorado. There’s just no other way to put it.
Please don’t get us wrong. We love the Clear Creek (Colo.) High Golddiggers for all their potential Kanye tie-ins and Homecoming Week theme days. It’s a fantastic mascot. Yet, Colorado’s terrific mascots are so deep that it’s still hard to find in favor of the Golddiggers over some of its competitors.
While Clear Creek has Golddiger Gus prowling the sidelines, it’s hard to come up against the Carbondale (Colo.) Rocky Mountain School Rocky Mountain Oysters. Really. There is a school that has named its teams after fried bull testicles.
In fact, the school takes the mascot quite seriously, with the girls soccer team refusing to be affiliated with animal testes and referring to itself as the Rocky Mountain School Pearls instead.
Or how about the Meloneers? What, you’ve never heard of a Meloneer before? Don’t worry, neither had Prep Rally before we tripped across Rocky Ford (Colo.) High, which apparently is situated in the middle of a major melon producing part of the state. That’s the entire genesis of the nickname.
Even the Alamoosa (Colo.) High Mean Moose could make a claim to be the state’s best mascot, if only because of how it got its name. According to USA Today, Alamoosa's squads had always been known simply as the Moose until a screen printing shop erroneously spelled out “Mean Moose” on the front of the school’s basketball jerseys instead of incorporating the desired logo of a mean-looking moose.
The rest, as they say, is history.
In this case, USA Today voters decided that the team worthy of making history was the Golddigers. Not a bad choice, but maybe not the boldest. After all, how do you top a fried testicle?
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