A group of students at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) is taking steps to decide on a school mascot. Currently, the “Vineyarders” are not associated with any particular entity, raising the philosophical question: “What is a Vineyarder?” Is it a bunch of grapes? An osprey? A shark? Following a survey of 268 members of the student body in early January, Spirit Club led a student meeting on Jan. 27 and presented their findings to the school committee on Feb. 2.
In the survey of the student body, respondents were asked whether they agreed with the statement: “I think we should add a school mascot.” Of the 268 people who took the survey, 48.5 percent strongly agreed, 48.5 percent agreed, 1.5 percent disagreed, and 1.5 percent strongly disagreed.
Spirit Club was created earlier this school year by sophomores Charlotte Cramer and Madison Curelli, who are also the president and vice president of their class, respectively. “Student government had other projects that needed to be focused on rather than some spirit things. We both felt passionate about getting a mascot and realized that we could start our own club to really focus on that,” said Madison.
Sophomore and student council treasurer Zoe Higgins, who is on both the swim and soccer teams, attended the presentation to the school committee. “I was pretty skeptical of [establishing a mascot] before the meeting, because I didn’t know if we were going to be able to afford it, but that meeting really cleared it up,” she said.
Zoe explained that Spirit Club plans to fundraise the money needed for a mascot costume. “I think a proper mascot would help. We should have a lot more spirit in our day-to-day life, because it makes the sports games more fun,” she said.
Madison, who also plays basketball for MVRHS, longs for more momentum from the stands. “Sometimes you have games with a full student section, sometimes you have absolutely no one. I think if we had a mascot we could find more consistency,” she said. “I know in middle school we had a mascot, and we would get the mascot for big championship games. It was something fun to see and something to engage the audience.”
Some rival schools joke that the current mascot is “the Grapes” and Zoe believes that intentionally choosing a mascot will help combat this misconception. “I could understand why people would think our mascot is the Grapes — but it’s embarrassing when you say that phrase and we beat you,” said Zoe. “I think they are going to come up with a new nickname no matter what, but as a sports team and as the Vineyard, I think we should just move on.”
Senior and swim team member Joao Nunes said he was unaware of Spirit Club’s efforts to establish a new mascot. After hearing more about the topic, he said, “It probably won’t have that big of a difference in everyday life, but games would be a lot better with one!”