CLEVELAND — For the first time in the school's history, the Shelby High School boys basketball team is in the hunt for a championship in the OHSAA tournament.

John Gies, the school's principal, said the boys basketball team is a great source of joy for the school and the entire Shelby community.

Gies has been a Whippet his whole life. He graduated from the high school in 1984 and takes great pride in the school's history, including how they got their iconic mascot.

“The story behind it is, we had a bicycle company in town, the Shelby Cycling Company, pretty well known bicycles,” Gies said. “They were actually in all of the Shirley Temple movies. When she rode a bicycle, she rode a Shelby bicycle.”

One of the models sold by the company was the Shelby Whippet Bicycle.

“There was a guy named Clarence Wagner who rode a Whippet bicycle across the country twice, and when he came back, he would give the bikes to the football team, and they would use it for part of their training,” Gies said. “So one day, as Clarence was standing watching a football game with two reporters, one from Ashland and one from Shelby, one of the people around them said, ‘those boys run really fast, they run about as fast as a Whippet!’ And the Ashland reporter used that and put it in their story, so that was 1928.”

The school’s mascot has been the Whippets ever since.

“It’s one of the most unique names in high schools in the country,” he said. “We know of, I think there is only five other schools that are called the Whippets.”