If you feel overly passionate about being called an explorer or about being represented by a ship, you may want to skip past this article to save yourself from inevitable rage.
The idea of Hudson High’s team name comes from Lincoln Ellsworth, a Hudson native, who explored the North Pole and parts of Alaska in the 1920s. He went on four expeditions to Antarctica in the 1930s and founded the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica, which are the highest mountains on the continent. Hudson’s first and second grade building, Ellsworth Hill Elementary, is also named after him.
Hudson City Schools was established in 1919 and has always been the Explorers. I have no issue with our school, our teams or what Hudson stands for, but the team name itself needs to be changed. “The Explorers” sounds boring and isn’t exciting enough. Instead of thinking of people who explored the world, explorers can be interpreted as people who are just diving deeper into an academic subject. It’s difficult to cheer for a sports team when it can be misinterpreted that you are cheering for academics.
Other schools near Hudson have standard team names that are easier to picture in one’s mind. In the Suburban League National Division, some opposing schools’ mascots are the Bulldogs (Stow), Tigers (Twinsburg), Grizzlies (Wadsworth), and other animal-related mascots. Even the Knights (Nordonia), have a knight in their logo, and it can be visualized instantly.
I’m not the only one who recognizes that “the explorers” aren’t the most inspiring team name. The name debate isn’t the hottest topic at school, but I’ve heard mixed emotions about students being “explorers” and not having an animal mascot. There have been various comments over the years that our mascot is inconsistent and confusing, coming from both staff and students.
At football games, we can easily find our mascot, Thor, running around with an oversized Hudson School District flag. We might know his name, but what else is he? When trying to confirm what he is with HHS students, I got varied answers such as “Explorer” (the common sense choice), “Viking” (a closely related option), and “God of Thunder” (referring to the beloved Marvel character). The student body doesn’t even know what they’re cheering for at games, which is a problem if school spirit is supposed to shine through at such events.
Although many students are opposed to their team name, some think the explorers are decent. This could be because many students who have gone through all the Hudson City Schools feel a personal connection to the mascot. They’ve waited to get to high school and to represent their idea of an explorer, but students would feel the same connection no matter what the official team name was, as long as it was the original team name they grew up with. It would be extreme to say they’ve been manipulated since childhood to think that our mascot is fun and unique, but more people should understand that our team name is not an amazing achievement that’s brag-worthy to other schools.
Most people involved in sports probably believe the explorers are a perfectly standard team name. They have a closer association with the title since they are called an explorer more than the average HHS student. When an announcer is announcing how their team is winning in a game, the announcer may say the explorers are beating the other team by a certain number of points, rather than just saying Hudson.
Not only are there certain specific student groups who like the team name, but there are also certain outside sources that would agree. Aceable, a Driver’s Education company, ranked Hudson High School Explorers in the 25 best Ohio high school mascots, in an astonishing 11th place. I don’t understand how the Explorers could have ranked higher than Ridgemont High School Golden Gophers or John Glenn High School Little Muskies, but the whole list seems to be inaccurate and in a transposed order.
It’s not that difficult to forget about the ship. It’s in all the logos on the school website, and in our school slogan, but it’s practically never talked about. A better phrase would be “don’t forget the ship,” rather than “don’t sink the ship,” since we have a more difficult time with the first than the latter.
When viewing school banners for our athletic division, Hudson’s logo looks odd since it is composed of only one color. If Hudson had to choose a single color for our school, I’m glad that it’s the navy blue we currently have, though I wish there was some kind of second color in it. This could easily be done by having the ship be outlined in black, as most other schools do in their logos. With the single color, the ship looks empty and uninviting. There’s no 3-dimensional aspect to it which adds to the emptiness, although other 2-dimensional school logos still look more interesting and have more attention to detail. Being called the Ships would be a slight improvement from the Explorers, except for the paper this article is in would be called The Ship rather than The Explorer.
I’m not proposing to completely dispose of the explorer’s name since it’s a very long and tedious process. If that were to be done, it would have to be over summer before sports teams get their uniforms for their seasons and everything would have to be changed all at once to not confuse students.
Now the most important question is, what could our new mascot possibly be? Hopefully, Hudson would stray from another name that’s a type of human and it would switch to being an animal. If Hudson wanted to alliterate, we could stay unique and become the Hippos. Instead of seniors coming out of the ship float during their Senior sport recognition day, it would be great to see students coming out of a large hippo’s mouth. If hippos are a bit too odd for you, we could go with something more common in Hudson, such as squirrels or rabbits.
I may be a hypocrite for claiming we need a new name and then suggesting sub-par ideas, but students could suggest better ones in a survey sent out to the district. It would be nice to let students get a say on their mascot, and if enough people were to respond saying they feel attached to the explorers and that they didn’t want to choose a new one, it wouldn’t have to be changed.
It wouldn’t be realistic to change the explorer’s team name since it’s been around for the longest time, but we should still be open to at least discussing how students feel about the mascot. Yes, the explorers could use a name change, but both sides should be willing to try and understand why it may be a bad choice or why it’s the best decision the Hudson City School District could possibly make.
