Atlanta High mascot is hopping happy

Atlanta High School’s mascot is very popular this year.

“Hey, Bunny, come here,” the children on the football sidelines keep calling out to “Victorie,” the school’s mascot rabbit.

And the rabbit goes over to give or take a hug.

That’s the best part of the gig, senior Jasmine Rigdon said. Entertaining children.

Rigdon dons the rabbit suit for football, basketball, the homecoming parade, sometimes volleyball games and for Easter egg hunts at the nursing homes.

Once she’s in uniform, she’s happy. “I don’t get tired until after the game,” she said.

Rigdon is so good at playing the rabbit, she earned All-American mascot honors at this summer’s National Cheerleading Association camp. She performed a skit on stage to show how to win over an audience.

Rigdon said she likes striking poses or surprising someone with an unexpected shoulder tap from behind.

She’s independent of the cheerleaders in most respects, but always in the crowd’s eye, so she must stay in character the entire game.

Rigdon said she can’t hear or see well in the costume, and wearing it sometimes leaves her dripping in sweat.

In her rabbit role she is always busy and a little mischievous. She happily lines up at the end of football games and shakes the other team’s hands, win or lose.

But there is more to Rigdon than hop, hop, hopping around in costume. She also is in the Rabbit band as a squad leader for the clarinets, president of the school’s art club and the artist who painted the rabbit mural on the wall inside the high school.

Staff photo by Neil Abeles ■ One of the Atlanta Rabbit’s most important duties—and most fun, the rabbit says— is to play with the children along the sidelines at Rabbit football games.