By Laurel Merrick,
Editor-in-Chief,
and Starly Richards,
Media Editor.
You are not better for not participating. You are not cooler than anyone else for sitting down at the top of the bleachers during a rally. You are not cooler for standing silently in the back during the fight song. You are not cooler for not dressing up for spirit days. You are not cooler for not having school spirit.
Football games are fun because of the crowd. The student section makes or breaks the game, because whether we’re winning by 30 or losing by 300, you can still have fun as long as the energy is there. Touchdowns aren’t exciting because someone’s stats are going up, they’re exciting because of the hollering, screaming, chanting and of course, the fight song that inevitably follows suit.
It’s more than just orange and black on Fridays, it’s building a community, one worth remembering after you graduate. School spirit is loyalty and pride in the hearth of your sparking and experimental years of personal and mental growth.
The more spirited you are, the more others will be too. If there isn’t a fear of being thought of as lame or odd, we’re a lot more likely to participate in events like spirit week. “I’ve never thought someone was cooler for not participating or acting embarrassed. I have thought people were cooler for committing to a theme or being super spirited,” said senior Elliot Macken. It’s like a snowball rolling: the more people that participate, the more appealing it is for others to follow suit. It connects you to the community and it shows that we are united as a class, school, team, community. In the end, it’s only embarrassing if you make it embarrassing.
Plus, school spirit is fun! Being part of the sea of orange during the fight song and going all out on a theme for football games brings a little bit of joy to an otherwise mundane school day. It’s fun to make fun of our rivals or insist that we’re the top school because our badminton team wins league every year. Which, of course we are. But you can’t do that if you aren’t even remotely connected to this community.
Finally, integrating neon orange is also a good gateway to bring more fun colors into your closet. It will help bring you out of your comfort zone and help you to develop a more unique and interesting style.
Be spirited. Peer pressure your friends into going to football games and encourage them to finally have some fun. Because in 20 years, you’re not going to wake up and remember how cool you looked in a black tee and Purple Brand jeans for four long years, you’re going to remember the football game where you decided that maybe orange isn’t an entirely stupid school color after all.
