The Story of the Cogs courtesy of Genoa-Kingston High School:
Genoa-Kingston is very proud of our mascot and logo as it is extremely unique and serves multiple purposes for us. The COGS name has been a part of the Genoa-Kingston Community since 1946 and it has since become synonymous with our school and our teams across the state of Illinois and beyond.
Many people from outside our community tend to assume that the COGS mascot came about due to some sort of industry or manufacturing prowess within our area, but the actual name originally came about from the acronym “Community Of Genoa Schools.” The idea was the brainchild of Vernon Hasty, a student at Genoa High School in 1946. A story in the Genoa Register Newspaper edition on Friday, November 8, 1946 tells the story......
From the Genoa Register Newspaper: "Last week the Senior class submitted an idea to the school. They thought our team should have a name and that the students should have a voice in naming it. Each student was urged to submit as many names as he chose. The Senior class then chose five of the better names and turned them over to the Senate, who chose the two winners. The winning name, "Cogs" standing for "Community of Genoa Schools", was turned in by Vernon Hasty and the second winner, "Jets", by Pat Bolz. Vernon received the season pass to the basketball games and Pat received the tickets to the Junior play, "Twixteen." The "Cogs" play their first game on November 15 with Kirkland here in Genoa. Let's have a good attendance and really "Boost the Cogs."
The following year in the fall of 1947, Genoa and its neighbor to the west, Kingston, agreed to consolidate their educational efforts. The result was the formation of the Genoa-Kingston School District. The district decided to keep the COGS nickname, mascot and school colors of Blue and Orange.
On a side note, at the time of the consolidation Kingston High School had a basketball team, a baseball team and a Marching Band. The school colors were Black and White until 1940. They changed their school colors to Red and White up until the consolidation in 1947. Kingston High School did not have an 'official' mascot of their own although several people called them the "Tigers" as Kingston was also the home of a minor league baseball team with the same name. The original Kingston High School building was converted into an elementary building housing grades K-8 until it burned down in 1954.
Genoa-Kingston has been known as the COGS ever since then and we proudly display our logo on all of our uniforms, fields and courts. We also embrace the true meaning and definition of a COG as it fits perfectly with our Athletic Department Core Values…….
Cog /'käg/ (noun): A part of a machine or a player on a team which is vital to the overall success of the entity.
All COGS must work in unison with each other in order to achieve a common goal. If all the COGS within a system don’t all work together, the system breaks down as it only takes one COG to stop the entire mechanism as they all mesh together. This definition helps us to define students’ and athletes’ roles within our district and help to promote the importance of each individual person.