I Fight For Springstowne
I am a student at Springstowne Middle School. I am also on the wrestling team -- as a small part in a big team. Coming to Springstowne as a sixth grader, I didn't know what to expect. Yet, this school changed me a lot. I met new friends, had more than one teacher, and had more books. The wrestling team helped me make more friends that I still have today. It was a fun way to get fit and know what it's like to have people doing the same thing but never putting you down if you do something wrong. In classes people would laugh at wrong answers, but in the mat room they held out a helping hand and showed you what you did wrong. I also learned how to deal with pain of everything we did. Most kids in the P.E. classes would whine about having to run a lap, but most people in the mat room would at least try to do what Mr. Trave had just shown us.
At the end of the year I was upset because the season was over and some of my friends had to leave Springstowne and go on to high school. However, I knew that when summer was over I could start a new season.
This year I'm in seventh grade and I'm still on the wrestling team, teaching the new sixth graders what they don't understand. I went to support my team down at the Vallejo City Unified School District when it was going to change the Springstowne name to Hogan Middle School. The next day, I learned that we were going to have our name changed, and it broke my heart because the name is much more than a name -- it's part of everyone in the school.
Here is a poem I wrote not too long after reading the news. I wrote this poem because it meant a lot to me, that one simple change could do so much harm to everyone who wanted to still be known as Springstowne Wildcats.
==================================================
Springstowne
We all fight for something. Some for more than one thing, they fight for all.
I fight a war we lost. Most would quit thinking they had no use to fight a lost war.
But we fight, battered, bruised, and bloody, we fight.
Like a garden of flowers creating a rainbow of color, fighting against weeds in order to survive.
Is there a garden where a single live rose spreads hope to the fallen? Teardrops of hope in a sea of despair?
We fight a war in order to keep our name. I'll rise if I fall, live as I die, so we could be heard, to be saved.
That in the end the fallen will be known for doing something great. I will fight to be known as Springstowne.
And I hope that we win the war we lost. And be known as such.
Because I fight for Springstowne.
Sonia Anaya
Vallejo