Sophomore reporting from the trenches of high-schooldom - the easiest involuntary labour you’ll ever be put through! There’s some school-spirit-like substance in the school somewhere. People dress up and do silly things when a game is nigh - last year, a senior ran around wearing very little, save for a silver-painted barrel with ‘class of 2001’ glittered on it. Most of us don’t do backflips of joy, but our football games are usually packed venues. Football players get the girls, but thankfully, not many of them are the real jerks that they would be in other schools (like my middle school).
I, however, am a spiritless heathen. It must be the early-00s angst.
At my high school they rated each graduating class at the end of the academic year as to how “spirited” they were. They measured things like attendance at pep rallies and other school functions and then ranked each class. Normally, the expectation was that 9th graders would rank fourth, 10th graders would rank third, 11th graders would rank second, and 12th graders would rank first. (Presumably, you were supposed to get more involved in school activities as you got closer to graduation.)
Our class (Class of '76) bucked this supposed trend by ranking dead last four years in a row. According to teachers and factuality, we were the first class to accomplish this fete. (Although I have often suspected that they told us this “fact” in a forlorn hope to motivate us.) I have only a handful of good memories in my pre adult life. This is one of them.
MY high school never seemed to care too much about the sports teams - no pep rallys or anything like that, though if you actually went to the games, they got pretty energetic. The most energetic time of the year was actually Winter Carnival - The school was divided into 4 teams, Gremlins Armadilloes, Leaping lizards, Tazmanian Devils - My school was called Alexander Galt, btw.
There’d be 3 days of competitions in such events as hockey, broomball, human sled-dog races, etc. Anything you could do in the winter, and anything that could be easily divided up between the kids from every year of school (we had grade 7-11). So you’d love your own team, and hate the others, and try to win as much as possible. The last day, Friday, was a day off of classes for all-day competition. The final big event was a massive tug-of-war in the Gym, and then a bit of a team pep rally competition before the awards were given out. It was fun.
At first I would describe my classes school spirit like Banjo Billy’s. Except that this year the school is giving extra points to the seniors. Even with that I would not be suprised if the Juniors beat us.
Our school had “school spirit”, but it seemed misplaced. Everybody was crazy about football, and really supported the football team. Our football team was horrible! I’m talkin’ ‘only winning one game in a season because the other team’s school had a teacher strike and there was no football coach so they had to forfeit’ bad! The boys and girls basketball teams also had a good deal of support, but the teams were only slightly better than the football teams. The baseball team, though, was great, and one year only lost one game. It was consistently a very good team. Nobody gave a damn. The volleyball team was a very good team, and was very competitive. Still, nobody could’ve cared less. Here’s the best one: the GOLF team won awards and beat almost every team around. I didn’t hear about it until I read it in the newspaper!
Our high school only has spirit during sectionals. It really kicked ass last year when our basketball team went to the state final four. And then we were ranked #1 in baseball for awhile, only to blow it in the sectional. And then we went back to our normal state of indifference. Maybe that’s because our football teams is lucky to go .500 on a year.
Not really. Especially after my sophmore year when they decided half of my class should go to another school and they left. We all knew we went to a bad school WAY down the scale with the 2nd highest gang member ratio in the state.
Although it did go on an uptake in that last week. I should have been smart and went to the math magnet school. Oh well.
Oh yeah, try the Rebels vs the Rebels… happens at least twice a year in every sport.
I’m in the class of ‘03, in a school of about 600 kids. We don’t really seem to have much school spirit (what exactly did we expect from a math and science magnet?) However, we do have oodles of class spirit… class colors, class mascots, class competitions… the whole bit. It seems that ‘02 and my class have been at each others throats at rallies since we got hear and everyone seems to look down at ‘04 because they have their little “boy band” do everything for them and they’re not too bright. The freshmen are adorable but they made the mistake of using the previous year’s graduating class’ colors so it takes serious restraint not to make fun of them. It’s lots of fun though.
In regards to sports… well we have spirit for the girls’ teams. I’m on girls’ soccer and we actually have a decent team and good turn out for games. Girls’ water polo made it to CIF the past few years ansd they get a lot of support too… The guys teams all suck so we’ve stopped caring about them.