Best high school mascot in Texas: Top 10 candidates

From Ro-Hawks to Voks to Fighting Farmers, meet the best high school mascots in Texas

Armadillos are synonymous with Texas, but Hippos?

Yep, the Lone Star State has those too in the high school ranks, and if you're looking to export either, check out Brazosport.

SBLive Sports' love for unique mascots with interesting back stories has been well documented.

We've crowned Hodags and Imps the past couple of years in national high school mascot contests, and now we're taking a spin through every state.

Over the past couple of months we've been going from Alabama through Wyoming featuring each state's best high school mascots, and then giving readers a chance to vote for their favorite. Our Texas poll posted Nov. 25 on highschool.si.com and will stay open through Dec. 2:

Vote: Which is the best high school mascot in Texas?

Here are the top 10 high school mascots in Texas:

Brazosport Exporters

Bring imports to this school’s games at your peril. Brazosport High School is right on the Brazos River and right up the street from the Gulf of Mexico, and exportation is a huge part of the local economy.

Central Catholic Buttons

This San Antonio school’s nickname is tougher than it sounds. These Buttons are the hard, round protrusions found anterior to the rattles of the rattlesnake.

Hutto Hippos

Local legend traces the origins of the Hutto hippo to 1915, when a circus train carrying animals stopped to fill up with water. The hippo escaped, walked to Cottonwood Creek and stayed there so long that it delayed the train until its handlers were able to get it out.

Knippa Rockcrushers

Volcanic lava deposited in the area more than 60 million years ago cooled and hardened over time to form basalt, a dark igneous rock also known as trap rock, and the Knippa Rockcrushers football team came along in 1946.

Lanier Voks

A Vok is a gear emblem that symbolizes a smaller part of a big machine. According to the school’s Wikipedia page, “the Vok represents an essential gear that would not function without support from its integral whole, therefore analogous to a vocational student entering society and the workforce.”

Lewisville Fighting Farmers

A reference to Lewisville’s rural past, the Fighting Farmers' old-school “Big John” mascot — a football player wielding a pitchfork — is among the best in the history of the United States.

Randolph Ro-Hawks

Never heard of a Ro-Hawk? Is it a mythical creature? No, it’s a hawk riding a rocket. The story goes that half of a past school board wanted to be the Rockets and the other half wanted to be the Hawks, so they stuck a Hawk on top of a Rocket and called themselves the Ro-Hawks in a beautiful example of meeting in the middle.

Roscoe Plowboys

Named in honor of the agricultural area of Roscoe, a plowboy, by definition, is a boy who leads the team drawing a plow, or a “country youth.” So it’s both a job and a state of mind.

San Saba Armadillos

This seems like such a gimme in Texas, like all the fish nicknames in Florida, but San Saba is the only high school in the state — and the country — called the Armadillos.

Winters Blizzards

Located in the central region of Texas, the town of Winters sees about 1 inch of snowfall on a yearly basis. Named after rancher John Winters, the town's high school decided to stick with the cold theme when choosing a mascot, and you have to respect the commitment.

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-- Mike Swanson | swanson@scorebooklive.com | @sblivesports