By Kelsey Philippe, in-depth editor
The force behind our teams, the hands behind the U, a community of support; more than just a student section.
This is how this year’s Student Section Showdown video begins for the U.
According to the IHSA, “the Section Showdown was an idea born from the IHSA Student Advisory Committee (SAC) that pits student sections from the around the state against one another to see who has the best spirit and sportsmanship.”
This concept was started last year, and was a simple concept. Student sections from all across the state had to submit a video under three minutes explaining or showing what their student section does, or what they are about. Last year the Underground entered and brought home the title of, ‘Student Showdown Section Champions’ for this video.
This year, the U did intend to make it to state once again. Their goal was just to improve on last year and do the best they could to improve the identity of Prospect students.
According to senior U Leader Liam Benson, who voiced the video for the first 20 seconds, “it was a great year. We outdid last year, and that was exactly what we wanted to do. We just wanted to improve it anyway that we could.”
This year, the U hosted a wide variety of events such as Color the Night, U-Knight for a Cure and the Back to School Bash. This spring, they will host The Big Knight.
According to the U’s sponsor Frank Mirandola, the biggest change the U has endured is going from a fad to a cultural mainstream over the past few years. Although the U only started a few years ago, it has really started to capture the imagination of the student body.
“I think that the most important thing to realize is that we don’t do what we do to win a contest,” Mirandola said. “[We] do it because it’s the right thing to do and it creates an identity for the Prospect student body. It’s not about winning a contest, that’s an external factor we can’t control. We believe we can control the mindset and identity of Prospect.”
One thing that made this year’s video stand out was that they didn’t stick to the blueprint of last year. Last year’s video was more of a hype film, trying to show the rowdiness and the craziness of being part of the student section. This year, U leaders tried to tell a story.
By showing things like being able to bring half the school to a football game, or over 1000 kids to a basketball game and even being able to raise over $12,000 for Fund a Mammogram, they were able to demonstrate just how much our student section is making an impact on the student body.
The winners of this year’s competition will be announced at the Class 3A State Championship game for Boy’s Basketball on March 21.