Riverside Brookfield High School won the 10th annual Illinois High School Association Student Section and Spirit Showdown competition.
RBHS finished first among the 12 schools in Class 3A and 4A that submitted video entries in the competition. The win was announced during halftime of Saturday’s Class 2A girls state championship basketball game at CEFCU Arena in Normal.
The RBTV students who created the winning video were on hand to receive their championship banner, along with RBTV teacher Matt Holdren and Principal Hector Freytas.
“Even just finding out that we were chosen as a finalist was a huge accomplishment to me and then winning the whole thing was, like, the most amazing thing I’ve probably ever experienced,” said senior Jenny Thomas, who was the creative force behind the video. “Just because it was such a big accomplishment and all the hard work just paid off and it was just so worth it.”
The award was based on a three-minute video submission that students from RBTV created. Thomas conceived of and created a narrative structure that featured senior Makayla Angshed sitting at desk in front of a computer looking for school spirit. Then the video, called Search for Spirit, moves to quick cuts from footage from the RBHS football and basketball games, as well as footage from the Homecoming Pep Assembly, a girls gymnastics meet, the Veterans Day event at RBHS and a brief clip of RBHS students doing some forest clean up, all interspersed with a couple of staged scenes of students suggesting to Angshed where she might look to find that elusive school spirit. Thomas shot the video over just a couple of days in January.
“I really took a big role on this because we were kind of running short on time and we were really busy with a lot of things and I knew I wanted to do something different from all the past entries I’ve seen, so I went to my teacher and I was like ‘oh let’s do like a narrative to it instead of just throwing a bunch of videos together.’” Thomas said. “I was to try to kind of have a scene to stand out more.”
Freytas had suggested back in September that RBTV put together an entry in the contest.
“Freytas was really pushing us to do it,” Thomas said.
RBHS was declared the winner by the IHSA Student Advisory Committee, which is made up of 21 Illinois high school students from across the state.
“They judged on each school on their student section’s demonstration of sportsmanship, creativity, organization and participation at various events,” said IHSA Assistant Executive Director Dan Le in an email. “Schools were also judged on school spirit and examples of community service and contributions.”
Thomas, who served as video manager for the boys basketball team this year, took the lead partially because she had shot a lot of sports footage featured in the video.
“I gave everyone a role and then I recorded everyone doing it and within, like, I’d say, two days, I complied all the videos that I wanted to be in it because I shot a lot of the sports stuff,” Thomas said.
Other students helped with editing and other things. Other RBTV students who helped create the video included, in addition to Thomas and Angshed, are senior Matthew Morgan, sophomore Mason Myslinski, and freshmen John Issacson, Madison Lannon, and Kayla Tulian.
Morgan and Myslinski act in the video along with Angshed and Thomas.
“I’m just super proud of everyone that had a part in the video and I’m so glad that I got to experience this, especially in my last year of high school,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that Holdren, new to RBHS this year after taking over from longtime RBTV head Gary Prokes over the summer, has been very helpful all year.
“He helped us get to our full potential,” Thomas said.
The RBHS contingent that went to Normal knew that they were among four finalists in their class but didn’t know they won until they were standing on the basketball court during halftime of the game when the other finalists and the winner was announced.