State of mind

Outbreak of Redhawks fever has Central cheering team through to championship


By Melissa Franic
STAFF WRITER

  It's been a short week of school but a long week of anticipation for fans of Naperville Central High School's Redhawks.

  Saturday night, the undefeated football team will face Downers Grove South for the title of state champions, Central's second time downstate in three years. In 1999, the Redhawks won the state championship after beating the Schaumburg Saxons. Along with the football team, band members, cheerleaders and parents, fans are getting psyched for a day filled with tailgating and, hopefully, another win.

  "Saturday is going to be awesome," senior Erin Zawiski said. "It'll be a long night, but it'll be fun."

  Sophomore Jill Price, who plays clarinet in the marching band, said freshmen and sophomores are especially excited because this is the first time the school is going to state since they've attended Central. And seniors are excited, she added, because this is their last year.

  Throughout the week, students have done things to celebrate their team going downstate, including scheduled activities and those that were a little more, er, spontaneous.

  The fun started last weekend when several team members found the foliage in front of their homes draped with ribbons of toilet paper. Kids also took old T-shirts and wrote the names and numbers of the football team on them and hung them from trees, Zawiski said.

  "It was all in good fun. The parents didn't care," she said, justifying that while 120 rolls of toilet paper might be a mess to clean up, they did it "because of state."

  On Tuesday, Central held an all-school pep assembly. The entire student body funneled into the gymnasium as the school's marching band played and cheerleaders performed routines. Signs announcing "Bring home the trophy" and "We're clapping for you" lined the halls.

  Dean of students Bill Seiple served as emcee at the assembly and would have made Monty Hall proud with his version of Central's "Let's Make a Deal." Four students and a teacher answered questions about the Redhawks and competed for prizes behind five small boxes. Seiple joked the boxes could contain a DVD player or a live animal, but items instead ranged from $25 to a canned ham.

  Later, assistant coach Dave Dillon thanked the cheerleaders and band and hyped everyone into singing the school song.

  "We want everyone in Downers to hear it," he said.

  Between noon and 12:30 p.m. Saturday, team members, cheerleaders, band members, parents and fans will meet at Central to take buses to Champaign. Other students will follow out in cars and caravan to watch the game.

  Of course, some of the team members will get special presents. Zawiski and her friend Jenna Cole went to the Build-A-Bear store in Oak Brook Center Tuesday night and made teddy bears for their boyfriends. While A.J. Sagan and Ryan Senica were at practice Wednesday afternoon, the girls planned to sneak the bears into their rooms.

  "They're really cute," Zawiski said. "We didn't know what else to do for good luck without being totally corny."

  While the week has been fun filled for those who are rabid Redhawks fans, some have noticed the noise isn't quite as loud as it was in the past. Assistant Principal Jim Caudill said students are "psyched, but it doesn't seem like as much as two years ago."

  "It's almost like an expectation that we should win," he said. "But kids are pretty excited, they were jumping up and down in the cafeteria and in the halls."

  Mike Stock of the school's student activities department said it is exciting this year because each team is a new group of kids.

  "We squeezed in as much activities as we could in a two-day week," Stock said, as students only attended classes Monday and Tuesday. "But I think it's a special day and kids are excited again."

  11/23/01

 
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