Rocket Man no more

McNicholas High School is most often represented through a rocket. However, in recent years, the “Rocket Man” has not been around.

The Rocket has been the mascot of McNicholas High School since the beginning years of the school. There have been two different iterations of the rocket. However, the most recent one being the “Rocket Man” has not been seen around campus since before the pandemic. Director of Communications, Mrs. Anne Jones states, “The goal was to update, but there have been hiccups along the way, one of those was covid.”

McNicholas High School’s Rocket mascot’s picture in the yearbook in 2018. The Rocket’s quote, “That youth may attain full stature in Christ.”

Although many students are looking to bring the mascot back, there are many more strings to bringing back the mascot than just a costume. Some of the questions include, “where would the mascot be seen?”, “how would the mascot best represent McNicholas?”, “would the mascot represent McNicholas being co-ed?”

Both students and staff have agreed that having mascots at sporting events, pep rallies, and community events such as the Flying Pig Marathon where McNicholas students volunteer. Jones states, “No one was all that interested in him… the reason they weren’t interested was because they hadn’t been to games. They didn’t miss rocket man because there wasn’t the experience where they would be with him.” Junior Liz Cheevers states, “I mean all teams… I expect to see this mascot at our track meets later in the year…football games, basketball games – especially like in High School Musical.”

With a new mascot comes figuring out how to best incorporate the new logo and new look of McNicholas High School. “We don’t want to take ‘Rocket Man’ and put an ‘M’ cross on him and put the right color green,” states Jones. However, there is an effort to bring back the Rocket to represent McNicholas as a community, so look out for the Rocket in coming years!