Ladies and gentlemen, put your pancakes away.
You may see that the
Cairo (Ga.) mascot name is the Syrupmakers. It's not that kind of syrup that's the inspiration for the name, though.
Cairo, located just north of the Florida border, earned its mascot name from a local company that
up until 2002 bottled syrup made from sugar cane juice.
Photo courtesy of Cairo Soccer
Roddenberry's was the heart of the town and its main product was syrup. On one rainy night players were stuck with no jackets out in the elements and workers at the local factory brought rain coats over to the kids that had "Roddenberry's Syrup" on the backs of them. What used to be a school of Tigers soon became a school of Syrupmakers, a reference to those jackets.
This school's website features a rundown of how the name came about, and it attributes the name change to "fans in the stands."
Female athletes at the school are reportedly called the Syrupmaids.
There are many unique mascot names across the nation that are derived from local factories. Industrial complexes in small towns often are the largest employer and a town's identity can often be tied to the company that owns the factory. In Cairo, the present-day athletes certainly got lucky that the syrup portion of the Roddenberry's complex was the one that supplied the raincoats, because the company also made peanut butter and pickles.
The school's website claims good fortune that the teams weren't named the Butterchurners or the Picklepackers.
Syrup City did lose its syrup factory, but kept the mascot name, and now the school will always hold a special place in the American high school mascot discussion. The city administration's website is even called syrupcity.net.
Need another claim to fame? Cairo is the birthplace of Jackie Robinson.
We also have to reveal that there is another possible explanation for the name, and it's another familiar origin. Newspaper reports sometimes referred to the school's teams as "the Syrupmakers from Cairo." We can't find attribution on this, so the raincoat story shall prevail.
