i'm Jerry Smith, I graduated in 1951 from Escondido High School. Sports was a very big part of my high school experience. I played football, basketball, and baseball. Participation in sports was very much encouraged at Escondido High School when I was in school. It's a little different than today because, like in basketball they had A,B,C, and D, and the determination of what class you played was by your size and age. The D's were the smaller boys but they had a league they played in just like the A team. We had championships, and regular sports activities with tournaments. Football had Varsity and Jr. Varsity, baseball had Varsity and Jr. Varsity, and track had A,B, and C where again it was determined on the persons size for what level they participated. As a result, in a school of 400 we would have probably 200 people playing competitive athletics against other schools. I played 4 years of basketball and lettered all four years. I played 2 years of baseball and 1 year of football. The goal was to get as much participation in sports in those years as we could. Escondido had a lot of school spirit in those days. We had the Oceanside High School football game which was the event of the whole town. We had a rally the night before the game. Particularly the boys would get out of school a week before the Oceanside football game and gather wood, everything from trees to outhouses and build this huge bonfire down by the baseball field, which is just a little bit west of Grape Day Park now. The students would spend all night Wednesday night, after the wood was piled and ready for the fire, to guard it so that people from Oceanside wouldn't come over and burn our wood pile before the rally. Then on Thursday night the rally would start at the high school. Everybody in school would join hands into a big serpentine and they would run down Grand Ave. in a big snake like serpentine, down to Broadway and Grand Ave. and form a big circle. There would be a truck with football players, a pet band, and cheerleaders, well maybe more than one truck, and would lead the group in cheers, songs, and things like that. Then we would all run down to the bonfire, the bonfire would be lit, and they would have all the yells and everything. With a big cheer, usually they had a dummy hanging from the top of the outhouse to symbolize the Oceanside Pirates and when it burned and fell it was the rally cry and we couldn't wait for the next game, the game that next day that we played. Escondido, the entire town, was very sports minded. On some of the afternoon games, before we had lights on the football field, stores would actually close during the football game so that the people could go watch the Escondido football team play. The town had about 5-6 thousand people in those days but the school had about 400, but that included Poway, San Marcos, and all of the Escondido and Valley Center areas, but we were still fairly partially populated back then. Sports was very popular when I was in school and we felt it created leadership and sportsmanship as well as competitiveness. It really made school fun and I think that in all my career and other activities the 4 years that I spent at Escondido High School was probably the happiest years of my life. Everybody enjoyed going to school not only the academics but the sports, and both participation as well as observing. the school spirit was great, when we had basketball games there wasn't a seat available in the gym, it was just packed, standing room only. And I would like to see that develop a little bit more at Escondido High School.