Top 5 high school mascots in Nevada: Vote for the best

From Desert Shields to Dust Devils, meet the best high school mascots in Nevada
Gabbs, Nevada, gets invaded by tarantulas every year. Thus the Gabbs High School mascot in the Tarantulas.
Gabbs, Nevada, gets invaded by tarantulas every year. Thus the Gabbs High School mascot in the Tarantulas. / Damon Higgins via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Some of the best high school mascots in Nevada are in some seriously remote locations, but one urban contender for best in the state is Cheyenne High School's Desert Shields in North Las Vegas.

Over the next couple of months, SBLive/SI will be featuring the best high school mascots in every state, giving readers a chance to vote for No. 1 in all 50.

The winners and highest vote-getters will make up the field for our NCAA Tournament-style March Mascot Madness bracket in 2025. The Coalinga Horned Toads (California) are the defending national champions.

Here are High School on SI's top 5 high school mascots in Nevada (vote in the poll below to pick your favorite):

The poll will close at 11:59 p.m. ET Thursday, Jan. 9.

1. Desert Shields (Cheyenne HS)

The North Las Vegas school was built in 1991, a year after the United States’ Operation Desert Shield began in Iraq. For Native Americans, a desert shield is a protective hide often decorated with bright designs and feathers.

2. Dust Devils (Dayton HS)

Not quite a tornado, a dust devil is a strong, well-formed, relatively short-lived whirlwind. And the Dust Devils' mascot has lots more personality than a lot of tornado logos out there — it looks ready to fight with its dukes up while sporting a serpent-like tail.

3. Fighting Muckers (Tonopah HS)

Tonopah is in mining country in off-the-beaten-path Nevada, and mucking is a little-known mining process. Muck is a mix of silver, rock and dirt, and muckers load it into ore cars for it to be rolled to the surface and processed. Fighting Muckers, on the other hand, play high school sports.

4. Serpents (Mineral County HS)

Mineral County residents have been telling horror stories about Walker Lake’s Cecil the Serpent since the 1800s, warning of imminent death to anyone who dared to swim in Cecil’s lake. If that’s not a perfect scenario for a high school mascot, I don’t know what is.

5. Tarantulas (Gabbs HS)

Anyone with arachnophobia will want to skip ahead to the next one (and stay away from Gabbs, Nevada, in the fall). From September through November, thousands of desert tarantulas get out of their burrows and roam searching for a mate, representing the world’s largest tarantula migration. They're so ever-present in Gabbs that the high school made the obvious choice of calling themselves the Tarantulas.

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


Published
Mike Swanson, SBLive Sports
MIKE SWANSON

Mike Swanson is the VP of Content for High School On SI. He's been in journalism since 2003, having worked as a reporter, city editor, copy editor and high school sports editor in California, Connecticut and Oregon.