Rockville's Rebuilt Woodward High School Chooses the Wolves as Its New Mascot Ahead of a Fall 2027 Reopening

Rockville's Charles W. Woodward High School has a new mascot: the Wolves. The announcement arrived in a social video in which mascots from 14 Montgomery County Public Schools pass a football along until it lands with a wolf, according to Bethesda Magazine.

"Why a wolf? Wolves look for a pack, look out for one another, and are strongest because every member is different. That's the school we're building," Principal Robert Sinclair Jr. said in the caption of the video announcing the emblem, according to Bethesda Magazine. The wolf was chosen after hundreds of mascot ideas and more than 900 votes on six finalist options; the finalists were wolves, lions, tigers, bears, dragons and storm, and the community also chose a gold highlight color to go with the school's purple and white.

The school, at 11211 Old Georgetown Road in Rockville, was closed in 1987 because of declining enrollment, Bethesda Magazine reported. The facility was used as a holding school for Tilden Middle School during construction of its new building, then demolished in 2021 and rebuilt in order to reopen the school. The Wolves will serve as the mascot when it opens in fall 2027; until then, the building is serving as the site for Northwood High School students while their Silver Spring building is being rebuilt.

Before Woodward closed in 1987, its mascot was the Wildcats, a name that went to Walter Johnson High School when the schools merged, Sinclair said, according to Bethesda Magazine. "Forty years later, Woodward has a new identity, and our community chose it," he said. The reopened school will be home to regional programs in the arts, STEM and a middle college program in which students can work toward both a high school diploma and an associate's degree.