Fremd wins second consecutive IHSA Student Section Showdown contest

"We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how about you?"

At Fremd, the answer to that classic back-and-forth cheer between opposing high school fan sections would be a resounding "We've got more!"

And in this case, the Vikings could promptly back that up.

For the second year in a row, Fremd has been designated as having the most spirited large-school fan section in the state of Illinois. Earlier this month, the IHSA announced that Fremd was the winner of its sixth annual IHSA Class 3A/4A Student Section Showdown, a school spirit contest that judges participating schools on their sportsmanship, spirit, student body participation and originality of cheers at sporting events.

To enter, schools submitted a video that demonstrated their school spirit over an entire school year, and Fremd defended its 2019 title with a 2020 championship that was commemorated with the presentation of a banner by IHSA assistant executive director Beth Sauser on Oct. 7.

Fremd, the first school to win back-to-back titles in Class 3A/4A, beat out other finalists, Buffalo Grove, Granite City and Sandburg.

Junior Shriyaa Sanjeevkumar was one of the students who was on hand to accept the banner.

"I feel like sports is a way that the entire school can be a part of something, no matter who you are," Sanjeevkumar said. "The student section is a place for everyone."

And at Fremd, it certainly seemed as if everyone in the student body was involved in the cheer section video footage, which included packed stands of enthusiastic students cheering on Fremd during the 2019 football season and the 2019-20 basketball season.

Sanjeevkumar and senior Abbey Iannuzzelli spearheaded the documentation of the fun. They are part of a club at Fremd called UCF, United Clubs of Fremd, which promotes school spirit and publicizes student section events at the school.

Sanjeevkumar, a student athletic trainer with an interest in photography, and Iannuzzelli, a soccer player who started her own photography business when she was 14, took most of the pictures and video that were included in the winning video for the IHSA's Student Section Showdown contest, and they also put the video together in production.

They say they combed through 30,000 to 40,000 pictures and more than 10 hours of video to come up with the snappy, engaging final product for submission that also included coordinating music in the background.

"It was a lot of work, but I'm really proud of it," Iannuzzelli said of Fremd's winning video, which can be viewed at ihsa.org. "We take so many pictures that people at school call me 'The Picture Chick.' Everyone loves it. The players and their parents love seeing all the pictures we take during the games, the fans love it, everyone is always telling us, 'Thank you so much for doing this.'

"But Shriyaa and I just facilitated this. We won this award as a school because everyone was so into it."

So what's Fremd's secret? Where does all the school spirit come from?

"In this day in age, it's really hard to get kids to participate in things," said Fremd math teacher Kelly Scott, a staff sponsor of UCF. "When I was in high school, in order to see people, you had to go places. I went to Maine South and we made the state finals in football three years in a row when I was there and some of my favorite memories are of being in the student section at football games.

"Now, kids can see everything on their phones and I think a lot of times, they're not going to things as much, and doing things. But I have been so impressed with the way that Fremd actually shows up. I think we've done a good job of promoting things at school, putting things out on Twitter and on flyers around school, trying to get kids to come out and be there, and they do."

During a normal school year, UCF, which includes about 50 students, comes up with themes for the student sections at games, selling T-shirts and making colorful signs that fit the narrative. The club also sponsors tailgates and barbecues before big games and organizes marches of the student section onto the field and into the stands alongside the band.

During basketball season, the club has sponsored 3-on-3 basketball tournaments that coordinated with varsity games so that more students would be on hand to then cheer on the Vikings.

"In the past, we've also had spring sports crawls where we'd pick a day on the calendar where there were a lot of events and we'd go to a softball game for a few innings, then go out to a water polo game, and then to other events," said Fremd social studies teacher Jason Dvorak, also a UCF staff sponsor. "Our biggest seasons are football and basketball, but we try to do things for all of our sports. We're looking for a lot of student involvement, and the video really shows that."

The video, Dvorak says, also illustrates Fremd's small-town feel in a big-school setting.

"We were just blown away by the video, all the footage and the editing. It was put together in such a visually appealing way and is such a great thing for our school," Dvorak said. "The student section, the biggest thing it does in a traditional school year is that it brings people together. With a school of Fremd's size, and with all the different backgrounds of the students here, the fact that the student section can bring everyone together is such a positive."