With the football team’s regular season ending in the coming days, Cape Coral High is hoping to see a spike in school spirit come playoff time. With the Seahawks seeing their most successful season in the past decade, school spirit has become a noticeable change on campus.
Cape High teacher Sandra Johnson saw the potential of the opportunity and decided to formulate a club revolving around raising school spirit. Johnson and a few other students came together to create the Hype Hawks earlier this school year. “The idea is to create a club for kids who want to help increase school spirit,” said Johnson.
One of the creators of the club, junior Natalie Lee, was inspired by the level of spirit other schools have on campus and took it upon herself to implement them on Cape’s campus. “ It’s really cool to see everybody be so spirited there and dressed up for the themes and stuff,” Lee explained.
“Seeing other schools very spirited in videos and even away games for football and stuff like that, and then, we don’t really have that much participation.”
The club meets every Friday after school, the day of a home football or basketball game in room 224. Anyone who signs up for the club will be given free admission into home sporting events and free spirit gear to cheer on your Seahawks.
According to Johnson, anybody could join the club and scream blue and orange. “Anybody who likes to go to the football games or basketball games, and who wants to help, like the cheerleaders are cheering, but we want kids in the crowd to like to participate, so kids who have school spirit,” Johnson explained.
In their last few appearances at the football games, the club assisted SGA in their efforts to bring life to the bleachers by passing out props and spirit objects to the students. “Last time it was under construction, or glow theme, so we, like, passed out stuff,” said Johnson. “Then it was a Hawaiian theme so we passed out Leis. So we’re giving out props and school spirit things, just to help everyone get involved.”
“Our goal is that our members will dress them up for the themed games,” Lee agreed. “The themed home games will basically be in the stands in the student section and they’ll be really just there, just present in the game and in the student section. So that is just the most immersive experience possible in the stands.”
The club hosted its first official meeting on October 18th for the school’s Pink Out football game. Senior Oriana Beber was at the event and described it as pretty productive.
“We made some signs to indicate where the parent and student sections were,” Beber explained. “Everyone was really friendly and welcoming as we hyped each other up while bouncing around ideas to bring some excitement and school spirit to cheer on [our football team].”
With the first meeting being a success, there is a lot to look forward to and improve on in future meetings. “I’m most excited for the club to really take off, and so we can start branching out to other sports that aren’t just football or maybe basketball, because other sports want that kind of support for their teams too,” said Lee.
Expect the club to take further action when it comes to playoff time for the football team and the beginning of the winter sports season.
