Rebranding The Sachems

Middleboro is in the midst of an internal debate. Some people in town seek to remove the Sachem name, which they think of as racist, from the sports teams at the high school. Other people disagree.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm no great thinker, so you'd do better just thinking on it yourself. I'm also a Duxbury kid writing from Bourne, and this is a Middleboro Matter.

What I can do is fast forward to a theoretical victory by the PC police. Pretend that the Sachem name is doomed. What name should go in her place?

Naming a sports team is fun but important work. If you do it wrong, your kids are wearing a stupid name on their chests for a century's worth of football, field hockey and wrestling.

Bourne, where I live, has the Canalmen. That name is so whack, it hurts. You can count on me addressing that in the future, but Middleboro is now.

I have the Death Star Indica going, and it is time to name us a sports team. If you have better ideas, hit us up in the comments.


CRANBERRIES

Ocean Spray has a plant in town, and you can't swing a dead cat around without almost hitting a bog. No one is offended by cranberries. The jerseys would have an excellent and trendy color. This might work.

It does move the needle on the Whackometer, however. It would also make for a terrible mascot. It's tough to rock an oversized cranberry costume. You'd look like a Fruit Of The Loom commercial reject.

It would be cool to dye the football field a cranberry color, sort of like Boise State does with blue.

My gut tells me Carver would be better suited for this name.

Next!


SHAMROCKS

Middleboro doesn't have the half-the-town-is-Irish demographics that you see on the Irish Riviera, but they still have a robust 21% Irish ancestry share, and that's good enough to name a team

No one would be offended by a shamrock, although the inevitable Leprechaun mascot might do the trick. I suppose that the uniforms would look like the Celtics.

Shamrocks are also lucky, and any team could use a bit of luck.


COYOTE

Animal names are common enough, but the local fauna evolves periodically. We have animals here now that weren't around back when we were naming our local high school teams.

Cool schools spot these trends and ride the wave. Monomoy named their teams the Sharks, for instance.

I'm not sure if Coyote is both singular and plural. I like no S on the end. It puts us in a rare group with the New England Revolution, the Utah Jazz and the Minnesota Wild.

Middleboro would be very vulnerable to teams with a Roadrunner mascot as well as catastrophic failure of ACME products.


ZOMBIES

Fan interaction is the love child of school spirit and spectator sports. Naming the team after Zombies would make every game Halloween.

It would definitely intimidate other teams if they drive out to some weird forest for a game, and the whole crowd is dressed as/acting like Zombies.

Crowd participation is key. Everyone at the game should dress and act like a Zombie. The P.A. announcer should do nothing but moan. The cheerleaders could abandon typical routines in favor of just shambling about and occasionally biting people.

Paranormal/cryptozoological names aren't that unusual. I assume that Salem teams are the Witches. Duxbury has the Dragons. There's also the, uhmmmm... OK, paranormal team names are a bit unusual.

It'd probably be easier costume-wise to go with Ghosts, but it would be a bad scene if an urban team drove out to the country and found a crowd of people in white sheets. Football games shouldn't have Shirley Jackson endings.


MIST

People who write headlines sometimes get carried away with Alliteration, but I do like me some Middleboro Mist.

The uniforms would rule. All grey, with grey numbers. I'd paint the field grey as well.

Old people would like this, because the team would look like photographs from the old days, before they invented color.

Games played when it was foggy would rule. Middleboro kids would be all but invisible. It'd be hard to cover someone who vanishes if she gets a step on you. It's also hard to pass to someone you can't see, but the Mist QB would have the advantage of knowing the play. I assume he'd also get used to playing in fog eventually.

If it isn't foggy on game night, the illusion can be created with a few cleverly placed fog machines.


MEAN

I'm into alliteration again, sincerely sorry.

Why not play off the Middle part of Middleboro? I needed a note from a shrink to pass Probability and Statistics, but I did retain some dim insight that mean = average, which I assume is close enough to Middle to name a golf team.

Mean is a noun in this case, but the homonym adjective has a bully vibe to it that goes well with sports.


BLIZZARD

Weather is tough to get offended by, even if it weather that can kill someone.

Blizzard sounds cool, it's local enough, it is evocative of toughness and no one else is using it.

There's also a Dairy Queen in town, so maybe kids will get free ice cream on game night.



PITBULLS

There are 10000 teams named Bulldogs... why not go for a dog name with more oomph?

Choosing the right animal is important. Batman is scary, fear is a great motivator, and that's why Bruce Wayne doesn't fight crime in a chicken suit.

This could backfire if a pit bull mauls a local child. On the other hand, they could play music by that Pitbull dude during games.


SOMETHING MORE OFFENSIVE

It would be funny if the PC crowd wins, mostly because "Sachem" is the name you come up with if you say, "Let's honor our Native American history with a tasteful name."

Humor tends to work full circle, and it would prompt a chuckle if they ended up with a more offensive name.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Middleboro Strippers!"