>Bear River High School has two mascots, Boog and Balloo, our lovable fluffy bear duo.

They’re known for showing up at senior nights, rallies, volleyball games, and basketball games. Matt MacDonald, the previous activities director has said, “The mascots I think have been here probably about 25 years, but we ended up buying new mascots in 2014”.

The mascots are most important in the expression of school spirit. Getting students involved with the mascots on a personal level is very important such as choosing the name.

“We had a contest on Instagram where people could nominate names,” MacDonald said. “Then we voted on the top ones and that’s how they ended up being named Boog and Balloo.”

Having the Instagram contest built the connection between students and the mascots. Speaking of students, there are no distinct requirements to wear the mascots as Jessica Lee, the current activities director, said. “We might choose leadership kids or if there’s a student in the student section like, hey we need someone to be the bear and they want to be the bear. We let them be bears.”

While the costumes are very well loved, they are also hard to maintain.

“We had to get them professionally cleaned at the dry cleaners so we used to do that every couple of years,” MacDonald said.

Lee said the costumes are hard to maintain.

“They’re super hot inside, you can’t really wash them or clean them,” Lee said. “We’ve talked about buying new ones but bears are tricky, they either look like teddy bears or they look kind of scary.”