Hannah Reed is NWIndianaLife.com's #1StudentNWI representative at Lake Central High School. For her first story, Hannah wrote about the fall sports teams at Lake Central and the involvement of the fans. Ideas in Motion Media is looking to hire one student at every school in Northwest Indiana to share the good news at their school. Click here for a full description of the position. If interested, send an introductory email to share@nwindianalife.com.
The atmosphere at a Lake Central sporting event can be described in one word: passionate. Between the close relationships of the student-athletes on each team and the fans standing in the student section cheering them on, the school has a sense of unity.
“We’re more focused on cheering and having a good time rather than arguing about who sits where and what not like last year. Me and a couple of my friends are making a big effort to involve more students and making it as fun as possible for everyone there,” senior Colin Chenoweth said.
Lake Central has a variety of fall sports teams including football, boys and girls soccer, volleyball, boys tennis, boys and girls cross country, cheerleading and girls golf. With the fall sports picking up, the heart of the season is about to hit full swing.
“I’m extremely excited [for football this year], because I think that coming off of last year we won a Sectional for the first time in 16 years, so I think there’s a lot of excitement about the program and the direction that it’s headed so we’re looking to hopefully win another one and then continue to move on,” said Brett St. Germain, head football coach.
The fan section of LC has grown in the past few years, grabbing the attention of almost everyone in the school. Many of the students who are heavily involved in social media have taken their Indian pride to new levels. Since 2012, there has been a boost in social media activity. In 2013, Lake Central Publications started a Twitter (@LCHSnews) to update other social media butterflies with themes for the games, news, sports updates and general talk about the school. In addition to the hype of the student section, a student-run fan section Twitter (@lcfanssection) has been created as well.
“Lake Central [news] twitter has 2727 [followers]. For games I just live-tweet games. The Indian, our mascot, [Colin Chenoweth] picks the themes. He texts me the theme, I tweet it from the LC account, he retweets it from the LC fan account and his personal account so it gets out to as many people as possible,” senior Jimmy Lafakis said.
In the 2013-2014 season, many accomplishments were made for most of the fall sports at Lake Central. Alongside the football team’s first sectional win in 16 years, last year was a good year for Lake Central’s other fall sports as well. There were many positive IHSAA Post-Season results. Girls Varsity Cheerleading won Purdue University's “Get On Track” competition, placed fourth at state and won two other competitions at high schools in Illinois last fall. Girls golf won sectionals and advanced to State, and both the girls and boys soccer teams won sectionals. Girls cross country won sectionals, regionals and advanced to state last year. Boys cross country advanced to state as well.
“Each week, we run against the top teams in the state," said Jeffrey Rhody, boys cross country coach. "Running against such great competition is a way for us to measure where we are compared to other teams and how we are progressing through the season. As important as those meets are, they pale in comparison to the tournament series in October and November. Semi-State is always a very special meet and we are training hard so that the State Finals is as well."
With the abilities of the athletes at Lake Central, the support of the growing fan section and the hard work and dedication of everyone involved, this year’s fall sport season promises to be another one for the books.
Top photo and third photo by Jeannine Toth, junior at Lake Central High School.
Second and fifth photos by Hannah Giese, senior at Lake Central.
Fourth photo by Cassidy Niewiadomski, junior at Lake Central.