Sentinel High School has quite a few activities for the students to participate in. Some of the most popular are the performing arts and sports teams. Despite this, the sports get a lot of publicity within the school while the arts get very little. People in both sports and arts put in hours of work every week to produce something incredible, whether that’s a football game or the halftime show and they both deserve the credit for the effort they put in.
Assemblies at Sentinel are very sports oriented. The band plays at the pep assemblies, but none of the other arts are spoken about, or included in games. This year’s homecoming assembly had more acknowledgement for the band than previous years, however, they still did not get nearly as much as the sports teams received.
Homecoming itself may focus strictly on sports, but if that is the case, there should also be recognized events for other activities. For example, if there was an assembly addressing the thespian festival or AA in the winter or simply mentioning it on the announcements.
The visual arts classes have cases in the art hallway. While the performing arts only have one case that is mostly used for band in the commons; Choir and Orchestra have none. The theater has a place to put photos, but no one in the school has a key to it, so Mrs. Cassidy, the theater teacher, is not able to use them.
Having something to memorialize people can be influential for the ones on display and the students who will come after. Ms. Funk went to The University of Montana and she said, “I was looking and they had a picture of my dad [Gary Funk] with four other people and they’re all looking at a score together. […] I thought that was really interesting”. Her father was a renowned choir teacher at the UM.
Sentinel representing everything that the students are passionate about would help to boost community. Funk and many others agree that there should be more pride and recognition for “people who put so much hard work and effort into our theater, into our performing arts department”.
The sports teams have many posters and banners in the gym and hallways. While the performing arts have a hallway, it’s the smallest hallway in the school; despite being so close to the office, it’s not one that many people walk down and see. Having awards and posters in the halls where the rooms that they take place can be prideful for those involved in that activity, but it doesn’t do much to help boost public awareness of any events that are taking place.
The art teachers’ classrooms all have posters and trophies in them, but similar to the arts hallway, the only people who go in and see them are the students in those classes. While seeing the posters can give them a boost of pride, it doesn’t help others to recognize the achievements they have made. Moving the boards and cases to a more public area of the school could help to put out information better.
Sentinel’s art programs have won many awards in different areas. However, unlike sports teams, most fine arts don’t have conflicts. While some events are called competitions, there is no true rivalry between bands, orchestras, or even debate teams. The trophies that they win aren’t showing someone else losing, simply Sentinel winning. This can be a good way to show collaboration and hard work without conflict.
Sports are excellent for people who are competitive, the arts can be helpful for the people who are less interested in competition but still want to be a part of a team activity at the school.
Along with the trophy cases, Sentinel has a fairly new sports hall of fame with the class of 1964. The class was a special case because as vice principal Craig Mettler stated, “what makes them unique is that they won everything you could win”. The class of ‘64 won every state title that was available in sports.
The hall-of-fame itself was not put in place by the school. It’s run by three Sentinel high school staff who are on the committee, Mr. Moser, Ms. Anderson, and Mr. Beck. The rest of the committee are mostly retired SHS teachers and alumni who came together to create it. Principal Thennis approved the committee’s idea because “their goal is to acknowledge past teams and individuals who are in formal historical record books”.
While having a hall of fame for the arts would certainly help with publicity, it would be complicated to figure out what would authorize induction into it. Would someone have to be involved in every single art or simply excel at one or two? Similarly to the sports hall of fame, the arts would need to be run by teachers and alumni and not by the school itself. All funding and planning would need to be coordinated without the schools help.
The people in sports and arts are often thought of as very different types of people, this stigma mainly stems from stereotypes in the media. In reality they can have much in common with one another. This is especially easy to see with someone who is involved in both, like Aurora Cornelius.
“We’re so headstrong in what our sports do that we don’t notice all these other amazing and phenomenal people in the arts program.”
Aurora is in the Wind Ensemble, art club, Speech and Debate, track, and is on the girls soccer team. She is very passionate about her work on the sports teams, but she also thinks that the pride the school has in the sports programs can be overwhelming: “you can see it specifically with our football and basketball teams because we do so much for them”.
Two of other highschools in Missoula, Big Sky and Hellgate, have art cases. Hellgate has display cases for their arts, but similarly to Sentinel, they have much more for their sports teams. Big Sky has trophy cases that combine their awards from both arts and sports. Rose Hogland, a student at Big Sky High School, stated that having shared trophy cases “helps people realize our achievements as an entire school instead of just celebrating a sector of it”. If Sentinel started having more publicity and showing more pride in arts, it might make the student body more united.
