new school year calls for changes in raider nation

OPINION Lost in Translation

Isupport Raider Nation.

I support a roaring student section during a game that can bring our athletes to thrilling victories.

I support the energy that surges through the crowd with loud chants and the student body overdressed in the theme.

But what happens when this is the reality for only one sport out of the 10 we have in the fall season?

What happens is a lack of representation.

The Raider Nation Leaders are 12 seniors whose job is to support the whole student body in their sports.

“We all work together to ensure the Huntley school, community and athletes have every possible opportunity to be supported and promoted in their athletics,” Raider Nation leader Michael Dabe said.

According to adviser Brad Aney, each of the leaders is assigned to be a contact for a fall sport. They are in charge of asking the coach for 3-4 games that they want a crowd at.

“We give courtesy to the coaches and athletes to decide when and where they want the crowd,” Raider Nation Leader Matt O’Connell said.

They then make a plan.

“Raider Nation Leaders and I sit down at the beginning of the semester and get the dates that every coach wants and schedule everyone to attend one to two games per week, not including football,” Aney said.

Even so, Raider Nation attended a very small portion of the 173 nonfootball sporting events held this fall.

After 13 weeks of school, the leaders should have attended anywhere from 13 to 26 non-football games or matches.

Instead, they’ve attended 11.

This number comes from the Raider Nation Twitter page, where, according to Dabe, all of the group’s appearances are documented.

This has created resentment in some student athletes.

“Raider Nation has often said they were going to show up and they didn’t,” senior volleyball player Ciera Fletcher said.

“We had a home meet and Raider Nation said they would show up and they never did,” senior cross country runner Danny Fitte said.

These choices by the Raider Nation Leaders leave many athletes feeling unsupported.

So why don’t they show up to many non-football events?

According to the leaders, if the three to four games suggested by a coach cannot fit the leaders’ schedules, they do not attend.

“We have lives outside of Raider Nation, so we have to work around those,” Olivia Schramm, one of the leaders said.

“We just posted the schedule on the [white] board and we all took a picture of it, but sometimes those pictures get lost in translation,” Aney said.

As a result, there was no attendance from the Raider Nation leaders for girls golf, boys swimming, and both girls and boys cross country. This lack of structure and accountability leaves many games forgotten or unattended.

“It would be nice to have other people besides just your parents cheering you on,” senior swimmer Ashley Garrard said.

I understand the leaders are involved; most of them are in a sport, job, or other clubs. Their busy schedules can make it difficult to attend events.

But the lack of attendance leaves many athletes feeling unappreciated.

This needs to change.

Look at the example set by principal Marcus Belin-he attends many sporting events despite having the workload of a high school principal, father, and being a prominent figure of the community.

“I attend a lot of events, so I will schedule my time to take my calls on the road and answer my emails on the golf cart waiting for the next players,” Belin said. “We all have the time-we just have to figure out how we manage that time to be the most impactful.”

And that’s what needs to happen with Raider Nation: they too need to figure out how to manage their schedules and time and increase their efficiency so no sport is left out.

To be fair, sometimes, the leaders don’t hear back from a coach at all.

“For girls golf, we were never notified of dates to attend, we tried to work out a date but it never got through to finishing one,” Dabe said.

But really this is no excuse. HHS keeps their community updated on all the sporting events dates and location on 8to18. This information is accessible to everyone, even if they are not in the district.

When a student holds a leadership position, it is crucial to take initiative, especially when they are models of school spirit.

Dabe also said that the leaders try to schedule events to maximize attendance.

“We tried to sponsor events that we thought could draw a crowd, and that other students outside of ourselves could go to,” Dabe said.

The needed recreation of Raider Nation

By Gretchen Sweeney

Gretchen Sweeney

One Word to Describe Gretchen: Passionate

Gretchen Sweeney is a third year staffer and a Floating Editor on The Voice. She plays lacrosse and wrestles for Huntley. In her free time, she thrifts, works at Culvers, and listens to music.

Even so, events go unrecognized and lack a student presence because the student body follows Raider Nation.

As leaders, if they show up to events and promote them on social media, people will follow.

“If we get 30 students out for an event cheering, that’s 30 more that wouldn’t have gone before,” Aney said. “Then next year we can build up to 50. We have to make a culture of bringing a friend so that can happen.”

Raider Nation leaders are a highly involved part of the community who have many people they could bring to these sporting events.

“These students have the voice and the leadership in the most unstructured environments-they can completely change the course of what culture is for us,” Belin said.

When these leaders put the effort in, they have the power to influence the student body and the attendance at certain sports. This can be seen in the increased attendance of volleyball games over the past few years.

Belin is even open to providing resources to help Raider Nation with those numbers.

“I would be willing to explore outside the box and get the activity bus to bring Raider Nation leaders plus a group of students to events. We can find ways around the hurdles that we have,” Belin said. “We just have to be willing to want to do it.”

According to Aney, there is a new plan coming down the pipeline: Raider Nation leaders for each grade level.

There would be around seven leaders per grade that would be mentored by the senior leaders. Through this process they can gain experience in leading a crowd and gain experience in the position.

This gives a larger chance for the whole student body to be more represented. JV and freshmen/ sophomore games do not see Raider Nation leaders, but these younger leaders can attend these games.

When you have freshmen cheering on the freshmen teams versus the varsity teams, that typically consist of upperclassmen, they will feel more connected to the team.

This new structure will call for kids with confidence, responsibility, and commitment that are willing to take their representation of their school to the next level.

For the meantime, we have to fix the current culture of Raider Nation.

Some suggestions:

• Continue to appoint leaders to individual sports to be the contacts and reach out to the coaches to get their input as far as which events to attend; • If leaders don’t hear from coaches, take the initiative and suggest events yourselves. Just look at 8to18 to see when games are being held. Help the coaches help you to schedule events. • If the coach still doesn’t get back to you (and sometimes they won’t), reach out to a captain, seniors on the team or anyone involved with the sport to find out when to come and schedule a visit anyway; • Be sure to show up for every sport during a given season, no exceptions. Being busy is no excuse; your presence makes a difference, so be there for all of

Huntley’s student athletes (not just football); • Publicize your visits so that students follow you to events. If you get the word out, people will come.

Although these leaders are here to promote these games, it is also up to the student body to show up.

“We view this as a job to represent the student body in a positive light and that if we can’t be at every sporting event, we are still there in spirit,” Schramm said.

Supporting the Raider Nation Leaders by showing up to events with them will show them that they make an influence and that we care.

Team culture is very significant, so get your team together and attend other sporting events. Together you can cheer loud and they will return the favor.

So I challenge all of Raider Nation, leaders and attendees, to think: what kind of school spirit legacy do you want to leave?

from MIDTERMS page 25

candidates are invited to talk themselves up or criticize their opponents. Recent years have shown an influx in demonizing the other person’s values and character.

Bringing to light someone’s character could have saved us from the horror show that was our 45th president.

“And so I pretty much try to tune it out, because, at some point, it just becomes obnoxious.” social studies teacher, Alex Berman said.

For the past 50-60 years of elections, campaigning has been what it is today.

However, social media has only worsened the rage and targeted blows at one another. Regardless of First Amendment rights, dehumanization of anyone becomes polarization and then becomes indoctrination.

People should be able to make their campaign and state their abilities, not someone else’s. Without unity, our country will constantly decline and with this upcoming presidential election, people will never be able to help themselves.

Like a moth to a flame, hateful words will prevail and most likely continue until people develop common decency for one another.

“Scorn” leaves players dissatisfied

Ebb Software’s newest title gives gamers mixed feelings about its mechanics, art style

By Anthony Ciuleba

Based on the downright terrifying art of H.R Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, Ebb Software’s “Scorn” is a survival horror game that uses in-depth puzzles and combat to further its story, and explore the dystopian setting of the game.

The video game in question was released on Oct. 14 and takes place in an alien world, with the intention being the feeling of being thrown into the world. Filled to the brim with eldritch horrors, techno monsters, and surrealist topography, the overall look and feel of “Scorn” send shivers down even the most stoic of players’ spines.

In the beginning of the story, the player is forced to equip a gauntlet that leaves the protagonist bleeding and able to open various gates through the means of sticking both arms within a grotesque, fleshy control board which reacts to movements of the operator. Such gadgets and interactable controls found inside “Scorn” thus make little sense to contemporary players, furthering the anomalous nature of the dimension the player is thrust into.

Further in the story, the player arms themselves with various weapons resembling fire arms which fit in perfectly with the biopunk themes of “Scorn,” with one of the weapons being some sort of jack hammer-like tool with components primarily constructed with body parts and viscera.

Other reviewers also praise the excellent atmosphere “Scorn” has to offer, such as PC Gamer’s Tec Litchfield claiming that “Scorn” is “a truly alien world, one that by turns surprised, sickened, and genuinely moved me.”

However, many feel as if “Scorn’s” combat is extremely limited, and though “many in this genre encourage players to circumvent enemies rather than engage them… “Scorn” expects this, but its combat encounters leave little room to do so,” as Gamespot’s Alessandro Barbosa puts it.

Some audiences disagree with the negative portrayal of combat within “Scorn.” They argue that the janky combat complements the dread and misery felt by “Scorn’s” environment, forcing players to save what precious ammo they may have and forcing many to go back should they have missed a weapon that is required for a section in the future. While it may not be attractive to everyone, such features enhance the short experience and make it’s tension sky rocket, making a player doubt whether or not they have missed something, and if they should go back and check.

The puzzles themselves are fine. There are not any real problems with said puzzles, though there could have been more of them. A critically acclaimed game, which also deals heavily with portals, is the Portal series by Valve Softworks, which features predominantly puzzles with heavy story elements, much like “Scorn.”

Within the Portal series, combat was directly linked with the puzzles throughout the games, so seeing a different take on combat in “Scorn” left a bad taste in many players’ mouths, regardless if the player base anticipated puzzles at all.

Overall, the new “Scorn” game has potential and many players have their own mixed opinions on its features.