Lady (mascot)?

That used to be worse. When I was a student at one of their rivals in the mid-80's, they used to call the girls' teams Redskinettes.

Me, personally, I don't use Lady unless it's my understanding that it's an official part of the nickname. If there's a need to identify gender, I use "Podunk County girls" or "Podunk County boys" on the first reference or in the kicker above the headline, for example:

Podunk County boys 75, Lowbrow Central 74
Johnson's double-double leads Turkeys to tourney title

Out here, there are several schools where the girls' team calls itself something completely different:
Iola H.S. = Mustangs/Fillies.
Central Missouri = Mules/Jennies.
Washburn = Ichabods/Lady Blues.

Iola's administration tried to dump the Fillies name a few years ago but the girls' teams said they actually liked having a different nickname because it was something unique no other school around could claim.

 

There should be on nickname used for every school for boys teams and girls teams.

Some combinations are downright stupid. An example used at one eastern N.C. high school on the girls basketball uniforms: Lady Stallions. Uh, no.

And Lady Bulldogs makes no sense either. Just call them Bulldogs because I'm guessing parents wouldn't be that excited about their daughters being called Bull Bitches.

 

I ought to introduce you to the Bishop Miege Lady Stags.

 

I use the official nickname of the school. For high school, that is almost always just the nickname. There isn't a single program out here that is the Lady Whatevers. It's just the Dragons, or the Pirates, or the Rams or whoever. No Lady involved. The one issue with that is that one of our schools is nicknamed the Cowboys for everything. That gets a little strange, but that's their name.

For college, that sometimes changes. Using my Cowboys example above, if I was to cover Oklahoma State's women, I'd be writing about the Cowgirls. Penn State's women are the Lady Lions. Hawaii is the Rainbow Wahine. But most schools don't use Lady.

So it's case-by-case. If they use a feminine form, I go with it. If they don't, I don't.

 

That goes back to what I was saying early. I guess it all comes down to geography. I honestly don't know one that doesn't use Lady.

 

My favorite is the Lady Steers

 

From the game notes sitting in front of me right now: Baylor Lady Bears and Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

 

You should change Fighting Irish to Brawling Wenches.

 

Started to go through my state high school associaton's directory. Seven of the first 20 have a variant for the girls team nickname. Including the Bravettes. Another is Knights/Lancers. Later on, we have Heat and Trojans with no variant. There are also the Lady Princes and Lady Minutemen, and that's just stupid.

 

We've got a few of those out here in cattle country. Apparently, Spayed Heifers is not deemed acceptable.

I've also dealt with a couple of small schools that stubbornly cling to Bulldogettes for their girls teams. Another school uses Yellow Jackets for boys and Honey Bees for girls.

 

We have a softball team that goes by Trojans, the school's mascot. Every other girls team in the area uses Lady.

 

I always think of a story I read about Louisiana Tech's women's basketball team, in which it was asked why they were called the Lady Techsters instead of the Bulldogs, like the men's team: "You know what a lady bulldog is ..."