DAYTON–Students at Dayton and Waitsburg schools in grades six through 12 are voting this week on a mascot for the combined athletics program, school officials say.

Voting will continue up until 3 p.m. Friday, March 12, the ballots will be counted and a decision will be announced Monday, March 15, according to Stephanie Wooderchak, athletic director and principal at Waitsburg High School.

Students recently narrowed the choices down to four mascots: Threshers, Thrashers, Wolf Pack and Valley Kings. Local graphic artists Ross Hamann and Boe Stevenson were commissioned to submit design ideas for the students' consideration. Hamann submitted two options for Threshers, Thrashers and Wolf Pack, but demurred on the Kings concept. Stevenson submitted one for each of the four finalists.

Once students select a mascot from the four choices, then another vote will be conducted to determine which of the proposed artwork will be used.

The mascot topic was revisited this year after students, prior to the pandemic, chose "Wolfpack" as the combined athletics program's mascot.

The combined program started with football-only in 2016, adding baseball as a combined sport in the spring of 2017. The full combination, both girl's and boys sports offerings for high and middle school, started with fall sports in 2018.