School spirit showed itself to be at a maximum on Wednesday March 8 as 130 De Soto High School students and teachers travelled an hour by bus to the Topeka Expocentre to support the girls’ basketball team’s 2017 State Championship hopes. Students were allowed to miss their fourth-hour classes to go support the team, returning to the school after the game.

Although the team ended up falling to Maize High 51-17 in the first round, the DHS crowd continued to drown out the far smaller Maize contingent for the entirety of the game.

“[The crowd] was really helpful,” sophomore forward Hannah Wilson said. “There were a lot of tweets about how our crowd was awesome from people who work [at the Expocentre] and do sports interviews, recognizing that we had the biggest crowd they had ever seen at a first round game.”

DHS athletic director Ryan Johnson says that he plans to continue to provide bussing for student sections to support State athletes.

“Anytime we have a team that makes State and it’s within reasonable distance to travel, we’ll organize a pep bus,” Johnson said.

Following an unsuccessful first attempt to rally students to attend the Sub-State girls’ basketball championship in Pittsburg, Kansas, on March 3, the girls’ team inspired many students to come out to the State tournament.

“I think school spirit was pretty good that day,” Johnson said. “You don’t make it to State that often, and so that is an experience for all of our students to participate in … it was good to see that many kids.”

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