Top 10 Christmas-themed prep sports names

It's pretty much guaranteed that you won't find a prep sports contest on Christmas, though we'd never say never. Stranger things have happened.

But the overwhelming theme of Christmas is for people to spend time with their families and take the day off from the rigors of daily life to celebrate.

We here at MaxPreps live and breathe high school sports, so we want to celebrate Christmas and prep sports all at the same time. To help you do the same, we have compiled the Top 10 Christmas-themed teams and players from the MaxPreps database.

1. Clarkton High School Reindeer
The Reindeer, also called caribou, is native to Alaska and the northern areas of Canada. Reindeer are not native to the far southeastern corner of Missouri. But hand it to the kids from Clarkton (Mo.), they've got a mascot name that nobody else in America has.

No word on if the people who chose the school's mascot chose it because reindeer pull Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve.

2. North Pole High School
Although Santa's workshop has never actually been located, North Pole, Alaska is the most likely spot to find it. The city's website touts 2,200 residents as of 2008 and nearly 32,000 within a 15-mile radius.

Nestled in the interior of the state, North Pole (Alaska) is perhaps the most Santa Claus-centered school name in the nation. The Patriots won a state football title in 2004 and the girls basketball team has gone 30-14 since the beginning of the 2009 season.

3. Carol City High School
Let's just take the literal meaning of the city's name. Carol City (Miami) must have earned its name because there are a lot of carols being sung there. It's a logical place to go mosey around and sing Christmas Carols.

Carol City has a strong list of alumni when it comes to sports. Danny Tartabull, a Major League Baseball All-Star in 1991, is one of the bigger names. Brothers Santana and Sinorice Moss (NFL wide receivers) also attended Carol City, as did former defensive tackle Lester Williams.

4. Bellarmine High Bells
So the bells aren't exactly silver, and that doesn't completely jive with the Christmas carol. Still, it's a good fit for the holiday. Between bell-ringers outside department stores and song verses featuring bells, it's about as Christmas as you can get.

Bellarmine (San Jose, Calif.) is coming off a very successful 12-2 football season that saw the Bells reach the CIF Division I Bowl Game after winning the Central Coast Section Open Division. The two losses came to CIF Open Division champ De La Salle and Santa Margarita in the state bowl game.

5. Merryville High School
They all must be happy in Merryville (La.), and this time of year they must be about as happy as can be. It's a very small town near the Texas border (1,126 people according to the 2000 census), so there's plenty of merry to go around.

The most noteworthy program at Merryville is girls basketball. Their records from 2006 to 2010 were: 28-5, 9-22, 21-9, 25-4 and 21-10. That's a combined 104-50.

6. Kids named Christmas
There are 13 football players with the last name Christmas on 2011 rosters submitted to MaxPreps, seven boys basketball players for this season and three girls basketball players.

Other holidays typically don't work well as last names. After all, how many people do you know with Thanksgiving as a last name? So Christmas is the best when it comes to last names, and a few lucky kids get the best holiday of the year on their birth certificates.

7. Kids named Noel
Noel means Christmas in some other languages, and boy are there a lot of Noels out there. In fact, when you do a search for the last name Noel on MaxPreps, there are just too many of them to display all the results for football. Other sports have large numbers of Noels as well.

What makes this Christmas-themed name even more prevalent is that Noel also works as a first name. Unfortunately, you can't search just for first names. Take our word for it, though: There are plenty of Noels out there.

8. Mascots named Comet
Santa's reindeer aren't hip when it comes to school mascots. Out of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen, only Comet can make the claim that it has schools use it as a mascot.

The MaxPreps database has 96 schools that use Comets, two Blue Comets and a school that is the Royal Comets. Some of those Comets are co-op programs, so the actual number is probably more like around 90.

9. Mascots named Angels
"Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is the name of the carol, and in the MaxPreps database, there is a healthy number of schools using Angels as their mascot. There are 15 Angels, four Blue Angels, Archangels and Golden Angels.

10. Schools with Santa in the name
California sure loves Santa. Well, if you look at school names at least. Santa is Spanish for Saint, and considering the Golden State's heritage, there's a whole lot of Spanish influence. The MaxPreps database has 39 schools with Santa as the first word in the school name - 18 of which are in California.