Walking down the hallways students notice colorful locker signs. Fall sports, debate, forensics, drama and journalism have locker signs.
Since senior Chloe Smeltzer worked to publicize the musical and play musical director Nick Franssen and play director Tim Laner asked her to design locker signs for the cast and crew.
“I was told to, but also, they did them for things like band and sports, so I thought maybe we should do it for the show,” Smeltzer said.
In previous years, cheerleaders made locker signs for the marching band and color guard. This year there were too many people, and cheerleaders did not have time to make all of those signs.
For the cheerleaders time is an issue winter and spring sports.
“When it comes to winter, it’s such a quick turnaround for us because we go from football season, and then we’re preparing for state cheer. State cheer is right before Thanksgiving,” cheerleading coach Becky Timberlake said. “When we come back for Thanksgiving, it’s basketball season, so it’s just a really, really tight turnaround.”
The main reason spring sports do not have locker signs is because there is no cheer during the spring.
Timberlake enjoys designing locker signs since it shows students’ involvement and wishes more sports teams could have them like they used to.
“The first time I did cheerleading, we worked in where we did fall locker signs and winter locker signs, but that was before state cheer was a thing, and so we had a lot more time to prepare for that and get ready for that,” Timberlake said.
The senior cheerleaders came up with the idea to put baby pictures of the senior football boys on their locker signs.
“I was actually talking to [senior] Isaiah Blackwell about them,” senior Lideah Moreland said. “He was making a joke about putting his picture on it and making his really special and then I was like, no, that would be such a good idea to put all the baby pictures on there. Then we put baby pictures on them.”
Timberlake liked the idea of senior baby pictures but wished they could have made it more meaningful.
“Some of them asked the boys, some of them went to the boys’ as moms and did them that way, which was cute, but I think it would have been better if they could have done it for all seniors,” Timberlake said. “Then again, when you have an idea like that people don’t understand the amount of work it takes to put some of that stuff together. Sometimes you can’t do everything.”
Fall sports receive locker signs because they are decorated and hung up by cheerleaders but the sports in winter and spring do not.
Junior Dawson Schmidt likes how they show people are involved.
“We should have a lot more for every single club or any sports team just to show how involved everybody is and how involved the school was,” Schmidt said.
