Elongated, stark white teeth, blue-gray fins, and a past as a target of the Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament: All of these are qualities of the potential new mascot for Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) sports teams.
At a MVRHS school committee meeting on Monday night, sophomores Madison Curelli and Charlotte Cramer, who founded the school’s Spirit Club at the start of the school year, presented the results of an ongoing vote for a sports mascot. By a slim margin, MVRHS students and teachers chose the Mako shark to represent their teams.
At about 54 percent of votes, compared to nearly 46 percent who voted for the osprey, the shark won out. The Tide was the other mascot option initially, but due to low support for the oceanic push and pull, it was removed from the ballot for this most recent round of voting.
The Mako shark was introduced by Spirit Club members as a resilient goal-setter with planned navigation and athletic stamina behaviors, an adaptable thinker with a large brain-to-body ratio, and a mindful communicator that uses unique body language and electrosensory organs to create a social hierarchy. Mako sharks are found in the waters off the Island; the largest, at 1,221 pounds, was caught in 2011 for the shark tournament, and a replica now hangs at Nancy’s Restaurant in Oak Bluffs.
Despite the fact that a popular vote chose a mascot months after the idea was officially introduced, the school committee members decided to table a final vote to officially induct the Mako shark.
“There’s not an official policy about the adoption,” Superintendent of Schools Richie Smith said at Monday’s meeting.
Plus, there’s already technically a mascot, so members were unsure whether the mascot would be an additional added mascot, or if they were voting to eliminate the previous option. Committee member Skipper Manter remembered the other mascot, a fisherman, which made it onto a few jackets but was mostly abandoned.
“Will we have two mascots? Will we have one mascot? How do we formalize whatever we want to move forward with and ensure that it’s adhered to,” Rizwan Malik, school committee member, said, “because this will be for our whole high school, not just for sports.”
Committee members questioned why the mascot search was started if a fisherman was already the existing totem of sports teams.
“What was the point of this if we had a mascot?” Amy Houghton, school committee member, asked.
According to the committee, students wanted a mascot that would involve a costume, potential merch, and a voice in the process. The prospect of a new mascot was discussed at several other meetings, and the school committee gave permission to students to start collecting votes. But the details still have to be hammered out by the school committee, members said. out by the school committee, members said.