The Cavemen Test — a nickname the nation was said not to share

1922–present · A PROMOTION CLAIM, TESTED

The claim: Mishawaka High School's teams are the Cavemen — a name born, on the school district's own telling, in 1922 or 1923, when a fan named Curt Johnson held up a sign at a football game against South Bend High at Cartier Field: OUR TEAM WILL FIGHT LIKE CAVEMEN. The name stuck, the school's teams play under it still, and the claim that rides with it — printed in the School City of Mishawaka's own newsletter — is that “it is believed that MHS is the only school in the country to have the caveman as a mascot.” The schools and sports records of this history own the name's course and the teams' titles; this chapter owns the claim, because a uniqueness claim in the nation's mascot record is a fame claim about a place.

The verdict: The claim fails as stated. Carlsbad High School in New Mexico is also the Cavemen — prominently enough that national mascot polls discuss Carlsbad's Cavemen “scoring extra points over the other Cavemen in the country,” a sentence that gives the plural away — and the national unique-mascot lists searched for this chapter (USA Today's twenty-five most unique team names, MaxPreps' twenty most fascinating mascots, the per-state surveys) do not carry Mishawaka's Cavemen at all. What survives the test is the true and smaller thing: a genuinely unusual name with a documented birth, a century of use, and a home ground at Mishawaka High School — locally famous, honestly so, and not the nation's only one. The claim is printed here at its tested size so that the record, and not the newsletter, has the last word.

Sources:

1. School City of Mishawaka newsletter (October 2015) — “How did MHS become Cavemen?”: the 1922-or-1923 Cartier Field sign, Curt Johnson, and the “only school in the country” belief, printed as the district's telling.
2. SBLive Sports, best-mascot poll results — Carlsbad's Cavemen discussed against “the other Cavemen in the country.”
3. USA Today (September 2026), the 25 most unique high school team names in the country; MaxPreps (July 2024), the most unique mascots in high school sports; USA Football, the most unique mascot in each state — the national lists searched, Mishawaka absent from each.
4. The schools and sports records of this history — the name's course and the Cavemen's documented titles.