Sugarbeeters pushing for a different kind of championship

Chinook High School competitors are no stranger to championship games, and the school now is in the middle of another in a regional contest — an online contest sponsored by USA Today with a $2,000 prize added to the bragging rights of the national winner.

"We are a close second right now … ," Chinook Public Schools Superintendent Jay Eslick said this morning. "It's a two-horse race right now."

USA Today is holding a nationwide contest to select the best high school mascot, and the Chinook Sugarbeeters are in a close second in the race for Region 5, an eight-state region from Montana through Texas.

As of this morning, Chinook was less than 30,000 votes behind the leader, the Greenbacks of Pratt High School in Pratt, Kan.

The Sugarbeeters are nearly 2 million votes ahead of the third-place team, the New Castle Dogies of New Castle, Wyo.

After traffic overloaded the USA Today server Friday, the newspaper decided to reopen voting in the round two part of the contest, starting at 1 p.m. Mountain Time today and running through 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Eslick said the name comes from an early championship the Chinook team, then called the Tigers, won in 1929.

After the Chinook High School Tigers basketball team won the Montana state championship, the team was invited to compete in the national tournament in Chicago, Eslick said.

Times were tough financially, and the company that operated the sugar beet factory to process sugar beets raised near Chinook, which still stands east of town, helped the team go to compete.

The next year, the team was renamed the Sugarbeeters in honor of the assistance, Eslick said, adding that the team also did well in the round-robin national competition in Chicago. While Chinook did not win, the basketball team did beat the team that eventually did win the tournament.

Eslick said the fans of the Sugarbeeters are hopeful they can pull another victory and advance to the national championship in the mascot contest.

Chinook now is in the second round of the regional competition, which pulled six team mascots from the eight-state region, and will determine the winners of the six regional competitions to go on to national competition.

Eslick said 30,000 votes can be made up pretty quickly, and Chinook students and residents — and fans from around the nation — are pushing to get votes for the Beeters.

"The kids are pretty resourceful in getting the word out," he added.

The contest is viewable online at http://contest.usatodayhss.com/, with Region 5 voting at http://contest.usatodayhss.com/vote/mascot/r5