Prep Pigskin Report (PPR) from KUSI News held its first annual Battle of the Fans competition this year and UC High was among the contenders.
According to ASB Sports Commissioner Hayden Stone, the contest takes place between different schools around the county to see how enthusiastic, supportive and loud students can cheer for their high school athletes. UC High was among the schools that made it to this year’s Battle of the Fans finals. The other schools were San Marcos High, La Costa Canyon High, and Mission Hills High. To be chosen to participate in the contest, each aspiring school had to create a video showing how spirited their student section is, added Stone.
Schools also included video of interviews with individual students from their school about why they liked their student section and why they believe their school would be good competitors for this competition. According to Stone, the students from UC High were interviewed about why they like the Roman Legion (school student section). The UC High video earned students the opportunity to take part in the competition. Junior Grant Ruthenberg said, “It was an awesome turnout and was well led by Senior Brad Berens and the ASB crew.”
PPR chose the winners of the contest by calibrating the number of votes a school received on social media, along with the number of students cheering and their level of spirit at a chosen high school basketball game. For the outcome of this year’s competition, San Marcos High came in first with a score of 29.49. UC High came in second place with a score of 25.07. Mission Hills High came in third with 24.60, and La Costa Canyon High came in fourth with 20.84, according to PPR’s Twitter account (twitter.com).
The most important game played for the Battle of the Fans contest was the game attended by KUSI and for UC High, that game was against La Jolla High. Junior Cameron Penrod, who attended this game, said, “We have so much more school spirit than [students at] San Marcos [High], and they are double the size of UC. I really think we deserved to win.”
San Marcos High also has the highest school enrollment, at 2,730 students. Despite having the lowest enrollment number at 1,712 students, UC High was able to finish in second place. La Costa Canyon High has an enrollment of 1,974, and Mission Hills 2,653 students, according to PPR’s Facebook page (facebook.com).
Stone said, “Personally, I think our student section should have won Battle of the Fans, because we were the smallest school of the competition, and we got the most support and the most votes from people on social media.”
Each school that participated in the competition needed to have a certain theme for the students of the student section to wear and represent. UC High, along with Mission Hills High, had a theme of American colors, red, white and blue. According to PPR’s Facebook page, San Marcos High had the theme of camouflage. La Costa Canyon had the theme of “white out,” in which all the students wore white (facebook.com).