EHS students rush together as the band begins to play their classic fight song. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors forget their biases, toss aside the stress of schoolwork and become unified as they rush to the Sports Complex, aglow with Friday night lights.

At last year’s Tiger Prowl, over 1,000 Orange Rush members followed the marching band to the Sports Complex. This year, Student Council President and senior Mary Webb aims to make the spirit section even “bigger and better.”

Webb said Orange Rush is “an aspect of the school that ties in everyone.” This fan section will be revamped under the direction of Webb and Orange Rush director and senior Hannah Griffin.

Student Council plans to have spirit days every Friday, expand the Tiger Tour to have “a fall, winter and spring Tour, incorporating both sports and performing arts.”

Webb adds that there is a “top secret plan to expand Orange Rush social media.”

“Another side thing (we’re doing) is ‘levels of Orange Rush.’ So you get so many points per game you go to and you ‘move up.’ A home game might be one point and an away game might be two,” Griffin said.

The more games students attend, the more prizes they can win. “We’ve thought about the different awards, like t-shirts and bumper stickers, but we haven’t officially gotten stuff,” Griffin said.

Griffin is also planning the Powder Puff game which is on October 6, half an hour before the Homecoming Week bonfire. “We’re going to have girls get in teams of five… and then we’ll only want to do one or two games. I’m super excited.”

Guys interested in participating in the Powder Puff game can learn cheers on September 21, then cheer on the girls while they play flag football. “There will be a time when (the guys) can go out on the field and do some of the cheers they learned on that day,” Griffin said.

Principal Dennis Cramsey says there is an activity for everyone at EHS. He hopes that students become better connected at school because this leads to better performance in classrooms.

Because students can “get involved by just going to games, making Orange Rush bigger can only be a positive thing,” Webb says, “Bringing the school closer together through school spirit will never have negative effects.”