Most, if not all, students have attended a football game, gone to an assembly, signed posters for different sports and activities or participated in Hoops for Hope.

You may not know, but Blue Valley’s Tiger Pride class is part of all of these things.

They run the assemblies, plan fundraisers like Hoops for Hope and attend all sports and activities.

Senior Courtney Thompson is a member of Tiger Pride and said it was created to support BV.

“Tiger Pride’s purpose is just to spread spirit and tradition and support our school,” she said. “We try to make every day a good day to be a Tiger.”

Tiger Pride has a different structure than any other class at BV, Thompson said. She said the students split up into four different groups.

“We are separated into committees,” Thompson said. “That way we can divide and conquer, but if people need help, we can cross over.”

The Community Service team was responsible for Hoops for Hope on Nov. 10-12.

Science teacher Azie Taghizadeh sponsors Tiger Pride, but the class is mostly student-run.

“We have a leader of the week and that is a student who is in charge of everything,” Thompson said. “[The student leader] also gives a leadership lesson about a topic of their choice.”

Junior Kale Samber said school spirit is important to him, and he makes an effort to show it.

“School spirit to me is dressing up as much as possible on spirit days and going all out,” he said. “[It’s] always going to games and supporting all of the teams — not just going where your friends are.”

Samber said encouraging the students really makes a difference.

“If we didn’t have school spirit, a lot of activities will feel unsupported,” he said. “I guess, in a roundabout way, that can make them not perform as well.”

Thompson said she enjoys making an impact.

“We have a lot of groups that appreciate banners we make for them or just the support we give to different activities,” Thompson said.

Tiger Pride makes sure to include everyone, Samber said.

“[We] support all the school activities, not just football or basketball,” he said. “We support women’s basketball, orchestra, choir, tennis [and others]. We give goody bags to sports if we can’t attend.”

Samber said joining Tiger Pride has benefited him in more ways than one.

“It has developed me into a great leader and has put me out of my comfort zone,” he said. “I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new people through it.”

Thompson said she enrolled in Tiger Pride because she loves being an integral part of the school.

“I’ve always been kind of a natural leader,” she said. “It was something I was interested in, and [I met] a group of people that I would have never gotten to know otherwise.”

Thompson said her goal is to make BV an enjoyable place to spend high school.

“School spirit is important because without it, you don’t want to go to school,” she said. “You [should] want to love a place that you’re at every day, and if you have positive thoughts about your school, we’ll have more fun.”