Be true to your school spirit

A friend once told me that the amount of school spirit I had made up for the lack of it in the rest of our group. I suppose this is true. After all, I wear the red-and-black Jackson colors every Friday when there's a home game. I attend all the home football games. I go to the parades as often as I can. I try to go band and choir concerts. I'm in several clubs, and I cheer as loud as I can for my school at all of these events.

Does that mean I have a lot of school spirit?

I guess it does, but I don't really know where all this spirit comes from. I'm not in any sports, and I'm not in band. Nonetheless, I still go to the games on Friday nights. I root for Jackson and hope we're winning even when I don't know what's going on in the game. I cheer for the Jackson Marching Chiefs as they march by in parades. And when there is a pep rally, I scream and cheer for my school.

I guess the tradition comes from when I used to go to the parades and football games to watch my older cousins march with the band. Cheering for them stuck with me, and I now go to see my friends march and play. School spirit has just always been important to me. Even when I was in elementary school we used to have "School Spirit" days, usually on Fridays, and we'd wear red and black in support of Jackson.

Now that I'm a student at the high school, I see juniors and seniors who have my level of school spirit doubled, easily. At Jackson we have J-Crue, which is our version of pep club. The students in J-Crue crowd the bleachers in the Jackson High School students section in the football stadium. They scream and cheer as loud as they can. They wear Jackson colors. They are a cluster of school spirit ready to explode. But most important, they're having fun, and who doesn't want to have fun?

I think that having school spirit is kind of like being in clubs. It's a way to make your high school experience more enjoyable and have more fun. So root for your team, whether you're winning or losing, support your school, and wear your school colors proudly.

Carlie Cattron is a sophomore trying to find her way through the halls of Jackson High School and documenting it in a monthly column.