As you take a drive along U.S. Highway 2 in the northern reaches of Montana, you will be driving through an area that survives on agriculture.
When you get to
Chinook (Mont.), you're in a former sugarbeet town.
Photo courtesy of sweetscholarship.com
That explains the mascot for Chinook High: The Beeters.
The city's chamber of commerce mentions on its website that the town was once home to a massive sugarbeet factory, and that it was the inspiration for the mascot, which has gained national acclaim. The Utah-Idaho Sugarbeet Company came to town in 1924 and the town became a big producer in the molasses and beet pulp arenas.
It should also be noted that sugarbeets are grown strictly for the sugar. The beets are not the main product.
The mascot logo features a sugarbeet head (complete with eyes and a somewhat-menacing grin), broad shoulders and betters as legs. Oh, and the arms are cranking the beaters, making a dangerous spinning motion on the "legs" - or beaters.
You certainly can can come with some explanations for the logo and name. Maybe they wanted to be the Sugarbeeters and shortened it to Beeters. Maybe they wanted to actually just the be the "beater" portion of the logo and changed the spelling.
Or maybe they wanted it to be a play on beating the opposition. Technically if you are the Beeters, you are the ones beating the other team.
We're going to go with what we think is the most likely explanation: They are Sugarbeeters and the name was shortened.
