Across the wooden walls of the big gym spread blue and white banners. They are Campo’s storied athletic history in fabric. There are decades of success and legacies across a multitude of sports, from basketball to tennis to cross-country. They celebrate champions and coaches of the past and present.
The tradition of hanging banners, to acknowledge accomplished individuals and teams in Campo sports, began in 1989. It was sparked by the girls’ win in the basketball state championship. A team mom wanted to commemorate the girls’ championship, so she hand-cut and hand-sewed the first Campo sports banner. Ever since, the tradition has continued.
After discussion with the principal, it was agreed upon that a banner could be set to celebrate the schools first individual champion, Sarah Riley’s 1989 Cross Country Championship. This was the first of many individual state champion banners, inspiring the use of future banners like it.
The color variation of the banners represents the different types; for instance, all the individual state champion ones are white. Cross Country and Track and Field Coach Chuck Woolridge said, “We also have the North Coast section banners for team championships and academic excellence. And then you have some of the old banners from previous leagues, like the Diablo Foothill Athletic League, the old T-Cal League, and other leagues that Campo has been a part of.”
The championship banners mean more than just showing off, however. For Woolridge it represents something more lighthearted. “Hanging the banners in the gym is a kind of tradition that we see in professional sports and collegiate sports so it’s just a way to show the achievement of our student-athletes, and it’s also obviously fun to rep our success and have them hanging in the gym so that visiting spectators and athletes can also see that.”
As every Campo athlete knows, working towards a state championship and winning one is full of hardship and challenge. It is not only the immense training to get there, but the act of winning against the best schools in California: “And to win a state championship in California is just crazy, because California’s so competitive,” stated former Cross Country and Track and Field Coach Chris Walsh.
Each banner tells a different story, sometimes of domination and sometimes of the challenge it took to overcome it. Walsh called back to the girls’ first Cross Country Championship win: “the first year we won state for girls [Cross Country] in 2001, we won by one point. It was a rainy day at Woodward… and we won by one point against a very good team.”
He also looked back on the banner that didn’t celebrate a state championship but rather a national record. “There’s a banner in there from Stephen Stumpf… he set a national high school record in the breaststroke when he was a senior. Swimming didn’t have a state championship… but the principal said, ‘This guy just broke the national record. We gotta get this guy a banner.’”
Only the best sports seasons could earn participants a banner, however; Originally the requirements were that the team or individual had to be state champions that year. In 2011, runner-ups for state championship banners were added. Banners for state championships include the players’ names and the names of coaches while banners for runners-up celebrate the achievement alone.
While aesthetically the banners have remained unchanged, aside from a slight variation in lettering, the idea behind them has. They used to only celebrate the excellence of first place, and now they’ve evolved to honor more. The growth of athletes, their mindsets, and their discipline, have prompted calls to give credit to both the major accomplishments of the winners and the runner-ups.
Banners celebrate wins, but they are also a tool to motivate and inspire future generations of Campo athletes to strive for more. Coach Walsh recalls a motivational saying spoken to every student when he was in the gym: “One of your goals should be to get your name on a banner.”
Importantly, the long-standing ritual of creating and hanging up the banners is here to stay. Woolridge, however, brought up an interesting problem surrounding a lack of space for future banners: “At some point we’re gonna run out of space so I know that different athletic directors over the years have talked about different ideas to consolidate the achievements in the gym. We have to consider if we will continue to be as successful as we’ve been and how we’re gonna celebrate those achievements in the future.”
Under consideration, that plan has been put aside. Walsh said, “the reason that hasn’t really happened… is that some sports might dominate and fill the banner while others might only have one or two.” Moreover, they are aesthetically pleasing, and hand sewing and cutting have been used in all of the years prior.
Campo Athletics is growing, and there is potential for newer and growing sports achievements to be added: “We currently have really successful programs in a lot of different sports, volleyball, basketball, football, and swimming. All the sports seem to be perennially successful, and now we have a growing flag football program. We have new coaches taking over other programs, so I would expect to see continued success across the board in Campolindo athletics,” said Woolridge.
Ultimately, the banners aren’t about winning. They collectively are more than just athletic success. They highlight the ambition, culture, and character of Campolindo’s sports community. They push forward future generations to come and work and achieve more than the students before them.
