Smouse Students Celebrate Iowa-ISU Rivalry With a Tailgater
Smouse Opportunity School is well known for the annual feast it hosts the week before Thanksgiving. So it should come as no surprise that the school knows how to throw a tailgate party on the day before the big game between Iowa and Iowa State. Besides T-giving, the school may be starting a new tradition of t-gate.
Friday afternoon even the weather was perfect when kids and staff spilled outside into the back parking lot to dance, play games, cheer and chow down as everybody got in the mood on the eve of the intrastate grudge match.
Principal Leslie Timmerman explained that the kids earned the wingding by filling a bucket in the office with “shields” awarded by their teachers for positive behavior. Smouse is the home of the Knights and knights are known for chivalrous comportment as well as shields, so no wonder Timmerman figured it was a question of when and not if the promised party would be held. “How great is it that it happened just in time for the big game?” she asked with a wink in her voice.
The party incentive is a wrinkle on the district-wide PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports) program that Timmerman and her staff came up with and it was enthusiastically embraced by their students.
As everybody filed outdoors into the weather football was made for, Joan Jett’s love for rock and roll was blaring from a good-sized pair of speakers and setting the mood. Teacher Nikki Heidemann took the controls of the PA and led the throng in a full-throated “Gimme an ‘S’ etc. cheer for Smouse. Then she invited kids up who wanted to offer some good-natured smack talk in support of their favorite football team. Not one but two wise guys took the opportunity to shout “Go Packers” into the mic. Oh, those Packer fans. They’re everywhere!
The cafeteria was cranking out hot dogs while some of the quarterbacks in the crowd took turns tossing footballs through hula-hoops.
Depending on where you went to school or where you live or where you hail from either the Cyclones or the Hawkeyes might win the big game tomorrow. But if you’re looking for an undefeatable bunch to root for, the Smouse Knights are your team.
