Best high school mascot in Kentucky: Top 10 candidates

The Tomcats are a juggernaut in boys basketball, winning state and national championships going all the way back to the 1920s, as are the Kittens in girls basketball. The school has a student physically become the school's mascot at sporting events, performing simply as "The Cat."

This one would be even better if the high school was just called Bowling and the mascot was the Green Purples, but there's a lot to like about these Purples. The mascot is a muscular purple creature with no mouth and an H on its chest. Why the H instead of BG? Bowling Green and Louisville Male both use the H because at the time they were the only high schools in the area.

Not only does Campbell County have one of the best mascots in the country — a camel walking on two legs and wearing a letterman jacket — it's connected to a fantastic mascot that no longer exists. Silver Grove High School, home of the Big Trains, closed in 2019, and those Big Trains chugged a bit south and became Camels.

Any fan of Clifford the Big Red Dog needs to get their hands on some Corbin swag now. The Redhounds' mascot looks like Clifford wearing a white sweater and white hat with a bold red C on each.

From the school’s website about the 1928-29 football team: “The Cincinnati Post wrote the Lloyd’s team played 'like a juggernaut’ and the name stuck. Lloyd then became the Juggernauts, being the only school or college with that mascot.”

South Carolina and Florida also have Thoroughbreds as high school mascots, but how can we not choose a Kentucky school to wear the nickname best? It's 103 miles away from Churchill Downs, but that seems like a stone's throw on the first Saturday in May.

With Halloween right around the corner, it's a perfect time to honor the Blackcats, though the mascot looks more like a fierce panther than a black domestic cat whose path should not be crossed.

From the Sacred Heart website: "Why be just a girl when you can be a Valkyrie? Our mascot is the Valkyrie — a Norse mythological woman who carried the bodies of brave deceased warriors to Valhalla (heaven). At SHA, we consider a Valkyrie to be a strong woman of great faith!"

Kentucky has its fair share of briar, and one rock-solid way to avoid getting stuck by it is with a good, solid jump. Somerset understands this, and its mascot named Cecil is the biggest Briar Jumper of them all.

We already met the Riders in Delaware, and now it's the Circuit Riders' turn in the spotlight. Circuit riders were clergymen in the early days of America, usually of the Wesleyan tradition, who rode many miles from one group of believers to another for religious instruction and to establish strong churches.