"Benito, Benito, Benito Mussolini ..."
Shortly after schoolwide Spirit Week began, fellow Gargoyle staff member Sarah Pfander had a few things to say about our school spirit here at Uni. Namely, that we don’t have much. Maybe she was right. Maybe for Pink Day more people showed up in black. Maybe for Hippie Day more people showed up dressed up in “2007 Day” garb. But maybe Uni school spirit is just like anything else in this school, a step to the left (or right) of the mainstream but just as vivacious.
As I type out this blog entry, my voice is hoarse and my ears are ringing from the deafening cheering I took part in at the Uni High boys basketball game against Judah Christian. The students in the bleachers could not refrain from fidgeting in their seats and ultimately wound up jumping up and down so close to the actual court that they technically should have taken a few steps back.
This game was most certainly not the team’s best of the season; in fact, the last time the team played Judah Christian, they had a dominant lead throughout most of the game. But even that did not seem to quell the incredibly enthused cheering. As players wound up to take free throws, silence would overtake the fans and they would crouch down too.
But it’s not just the basketball team that experiences the Uni wave of pride. After the boys soccer team’s devastating loss at sectionals, Ms. Kovacs left a box of donuts in the lounge with a note expressing her pride at their fight.
Even my mother knows where one student spent his summer for a prestigious math competition.
Students always seem to be recognized for their achievements, even if outside of school, and appreciated as being unique members of the student body.
Perhaps its graduation nostalgia setting in, since we talked about processional and recessional music today, or perhaps it is the sound of all of those voices still pulsating in my ears, but the school spirit is most definitely alive.
It’s the kind of school spirit where, sure, the fans would have been disappointed had their team lost, but they would have been just as enthralled with the fight.
Besides, who else has both a “Benito Mussolini” and a “Sine, sine, cosine, sine” cheer?
— Dana Al-Qadi