MaxPreps Mascot Mondays: Montana 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 Montana, there are 195 schools with mascots listed in the MaxPreps database. Listed below are the Top 14 most popular mascot names in Montana, the mascot names that only one school owns and other mascot facts/stats.

CAN'T BEAT THE BEETERS
The Beeters of Chinook come from a small northern Montana town where they like to grow sugarbeets. They aren't Sugarbeeters, just Beeters. The Chinook Area Chamber of Commerce website tells of how the Utah-Idaho Sugarbeet Company came to Chinook in 1924 and the factory made molasses and beet pulp. A sugarbeet is different than beets, as it is actually grown for its sugar and not the beet itself. The Chinook Beeters should definitely not be confused with the Beetdiggers of Brush (Colo.) and Jordan (Sandy, Utah).

SNAKELIKE OR SMELTLIKE?
The folks in Anaconda owe much of their history to the copper mining trade, and so does the high school. The mascot name Copperheads does have a double meaning, whether intentional or not. The obvious reason is that the Anaconda Copper Mining Company helped the town grow into the world's largest supplier of copper, according to discoveranaconda.com. It was a big-time smelting town in the booming days. But it could also be a reference to the copperhead snake, though that's unlikely. The venomous Copperhead is known as Agkistrodon Contortrix and is native to the southern and eastern parts of the continental United States.

INSPIRED BY IMPRISONMENT
Athletes from Powell County (Deer Lodge) do their work in one of the state's most notorious prison towns. The Montana State Prison was built in 1871, when Montana was a territory not a state, and it housed prisoners right downtown until 1979. In fact, the old prison (on the National Register of Historic Places) is less than a mile from the PCHS campu, while the new prison is just outside of town. It's not the only school to use a prison theme for its mascot name. In Yuma (Ariz.) they are the Criminals and you have the Fort Madison Bloodhounds in Iowa. But you won't find Wardens of any type anywhere else in America.

NO HERDING WILL BE HAPPENING
The Sheepherders of Sweet Grass County (Big Timber) don't have anything to herd. The only Sheepherders in the nation don't have a school that goes by Sheep anywhere in the nation. Regardless, the kids at Sweet Grass County come from a sheepherding hot spot. The Sweet Grass County Chamber of Commerce says that the county ranks tenth in the state in all sheep and lambs and has 301 farm or ranch operations. You also won't find any Shepherd mascots but you will find three schools named Shepherd.

NOTHIN' FINER THAN REFINERS
They don't pull any oil from the ground anymore in Sunburst. That doesn't mean the school's mascot had to change along with the little town, located 10 miles from the Canadian border. Refiners take crude oil from the Earth and then filter out unwanted material before it becomes useful in other production methods. You will find Drillers, or Oilers, but you will only find one Refiners, and that's in Sunburst.

TOP 14 MOST POPULAR MASCOT NAMES
# Bulldogs 12
# Panthers 9
# Eagles 8 (There is 1 Golden Eagles)
Pirates 7
# Tigers 7
# Warriors 7 (There is 1 Scarlet Warriors)
# Wildcats 6
# Trojans 5
Rams 5
# Cougars 5
# Falcons 5
# Mustangs 5
Broncs 4
Wolves 4
10 schools tied with 3
# Denotes mascot name is in America's Top 15

MASCOT NAMES USED BY ONLY 1 SCHOOL

Badgers *Bats *Bearcubs Beavers *Beeters Bengals Bison Black Hawks Blue Demons Blue Devils Blue Hawks *Blue Ponies Bobcats Broncos Chiefs

Colts *Copperheads Crusaders *DiamondBacks Dogies Elks Engineers Golden Bears Golden Eagles Honkers Hornets Horsemen J Hawks Locomotives Loggers

Lynx Maroons Miners *Morning Stars Mountaineers *Northern Stars Patriots Penguins Pioneers Porcupines Prospectors Raiders Rebels Red Raiders Redskins

*Refiners Renegades Royals Rustlers Savages *Scarlet Warriors Scotties Scouts *Sheepherders Terriers *Thunder Birds Tornadoes *Wardens Wolfpack Yellowjackets

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

MASCOT STATS
Most popular mascot name is used by 6.2 percent of schools.
There are 92 different mascot names for 195 schools.
13 schools have mascot names that no other American school has.
Montana's Top 14 features 10 of America's Top 15 mascot names.