School spirit has always played a dynamic role in student culture, but the way students choose to display their school pride has evolved over the years.
Marilee Rogers, Class of 1961, who was a songleader and Homecoming Queen during her high school years, described Redwood’s first few years as a time when everyone’s social lives revolved around football games and poster parties.
“We called it the ‘I-Like-Ike’ years,” she said. “We’d have poster parties to make signs for the games, we’d make banners and spirit ribbons, we made our own song leading outfits, and we made our own pompoms. We all wore white, and we had really organized yells and songs, and at football games we had simple card stunts. Going to the game and going out afterwards was part of what you did, and everybody was sort of involved,” Rogers said.
Rogers said that the football and basketball teams were both very good, and that almost three-quarters of the student body went to watch them play every Friday night. According to Rogers, students especially enjoyed the football games played at San Rafael High School, where Redwood students filled the bleachers and enjoyed night games under the lights.
Rogers said that students went all out for championship games, and even filled 19 rooter buses, buses that transported students to sporting events, to go to a championship game at the Oakland Coliseum one year.
At the games, students wore all white, did card stunts, chants, and songs. The song leaders, made yell cards and helped get students involved to raise school spirit. At the games they led cheers, sang fight songs, and belted out the school’s songs.
“We had a song called ‘Take a G, That Stands for Giants,’ and everyone in the school knew all the words,” she said. “It was fun. That was the center of our social life back then.”
Rogers said that there were different song leaders for football and basketball. Girls ran for song leaders as a group and auditioned in front of the entire student body at rallies, and then students voted on the group they liked best.
Rogers said that she ran for football song leader twice, first in a group called the 7-Ups and then in a group called the Pepsis, and won once.
“The basketball song leaders tended to be cuter. They tended to have more of a theme. One year there was a group who were all 5 foot 4 blondes,” she said.
However, the “I-Like-Ike” years soon died down, taking Redwood’s school spirit with them.
“After Kennedy’s assassination and during the free speech movement and Summer of Love, song leading was low and so was school spirit,” Rogers said.
In 1976, varsity football song girl Michelle Lamphere created a drill team, in an attempt to revive school spirit, which 70 girls joined.
“I noticed that the spirit in this school had died a lot, and I tried to get it back again by starting the drill team, where they would be in the crowd cheering but still take part in the half-time entertainment,” Lamphere said in the Oct. 8, 1976 issue of Bark.
According to Jackie Lehr, current junior and varsity cheerleader, the cheerleaders are still working on bringing more spirit to Redwood students.
“At Redwood, spirit is not a really big deal, which is what the cheerleaders try and fix, but its hard to pump up a crowd that doesn’t have a lot of spirit,” Lehr said.
Jake Lewitz, junior and leadership member, said that he still believes students have school pride.
“I think people can always be more spirited, but when we have really big games like MCAL finals, I’ve seen full rooter buses and those games are pretty well-attended,” he said. “We also recently added a second Spirit Week in the spring leading up to the rally and dance, which students really like, especially spirit days like Pajama Day and Rally Day.”
Although it is unlikely that students will ever go back to spending their weekends at poster-parties, according to Lewitz, with new efforts to increase school spirit, perhaps students clad in red and grey will once again fill 19 rooter buses to go to a championship game.
