A Tough Name Couldn’t Hurt ...

Back in a time, I guess, when such things didn’t matter, my Omaha high school was nicknamed the Bunnies. If being linked to a cuddly, furry creature bothered any of our athletes, I don’t recall them saying so. Not that such a nickname didn’t have implications.

One cold winter’s night, during a basketball game against our longtime rival North High School (the Vikings), a dead rabbit came flying from the stands and landed at midcourt. That prompted a short interruption of the game, along with an announcement that, please, no more dead bunnies on the floor.

Since we were unwilling to respond in kind by slaying a Viking and hurling his corpse onto the court the next time we played North, we let the incident go unanswered.

Lesson learned: Bunnies are more cultured than Vikings.

That doesn’t count for much these days, and I note with some sadness that the Laguna Beach High School Artists are now the Laguna Beach Breakers. Driven, apparently, by football players who found it hard to be an Artist and still want to knock someone’s head off, the student body has voted to change the nickname.

There’s nothing wrong with Breakers. It’s not like the kids wanted to be the Stompin’ Marauders. The school’s teams were first identified, for 19 months in the 1930s, as the Breakers. Then, in a nod to the artist colony that defined the city, students voted to rename themselves.

Athletic director Mario Morales says he’s fine with the idea, because schools exist for the students and the name change proceeded through proper channels. He doesn’t want people thinking the idea came from athletes. But Frank Aronoff, the school’s “unofficial statistician,” says it did.

“The big thing behind it were the football players,” says Aronoff, a parent and booster who’s compiled team records dating to 1934. It’s a small school that plays much larger schools, and the players felt the Artists nickname “was one more thing they have to overcome,” Aronoff says.

While football and basketball teams have fared poorly in recent years, the school’s more successful sports teams--like volleyball and water polo--didn’t feel diminished by the nickname, Aronoff says.

The issue has percolated for years. A friend of mine who lives there wonders why the school’s athletic teams didn’t settle things by calling themselves the “Fighting Artists.”

Morales says 72% of the school’s 800 students voted, with 65% going for Breakers. The Artists drew a measly 5%, with votes split among other entries.

So, the students have spoken.

However, alumni are yelping through phone calls and letters, Morales says. In just his second year at the school, Morales doesn’t have a strong feeling about the debate and says, “If the students feel changing the mascot will help, by all means I’ll support it, but I don’t think it’s going to change their performance on the field or on the court.”

The football team has had five winning seasons since 1980 and only one in the last 14 years, according to Aronoff’s statistics. The basketball team has had nine winning seasons since 1980 but has gone 17-56 the last three seasons.

“They probably feel it’s been kind of a namby-pamby name,” Aronoff says. Still, many alumni, no doubt, have fond memories of the school mascot from a generation ago--a student in a smock and beret and carrying a paintbrush.

True, that isn’t likely today to inspire fear in an opponent or rally the home team, but somewhere down the road, I suspect students will regret their decision to end the school’s long tradition of having an iconoclastic nickname.

“I can see it both ways,” Aronoff says. “I don’t know how menacing a wave is, but it’s still better than being an artist. I think that’s probably where the guys in football are coming from.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons at (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.