All Over The Map: KIRO Newsradio’s junior high/middle school fight song challenge
May 23, 2024, 1:48 PM | Updated: May 24, 2024, 8:07 am
We’re on a mission to collect recordings of as many Puget Sound area junior high/middle school fight songs as possible to document history and celebrate our alma maters as summer approaches. If we get some good ones shared via Facebook, we’ll play audio of them on the radio as part of a future broadcast of All Over The Map.
College fight songs get most of the love and attention and airplay around here, and most people can recognize “Bow Down To Washington” or whatever they call that song from that school over by Pullman. Even high school fight songs get a fair amount of love and attention, while those from junior highs and middle schools seem to languish in obscurity. Either way, the songs sung by sometimes cracking voices from 6th grade to 9th grade are worth shining some light on now as the school year winds down, and worth assembling something of an online archive around.
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Thanks to fellow Rose Hill Royal, Bill Wixey of FOX 13 Seattle, for joining me in a sample video to sing the fight song for Rose Hill Junior High, which is now called Rose Hill Middle School. It didn’t hurt my feelings that my old friend Bill called me “Alex” by mistake, and that he didn’t know all the words to the song.
Bill Wixey was, is and always will be a Rose Hill Royal. And look at that hair! (Photo: 1981 Rose Hill Junior High yearbook courtesy of Feliks Banel, KIRO Newsradio)
To join in the fight song challenge fun, just film yourself alone or with a group of alums or family members or friends singing the fight song from your Puget Sound area junior high or middle school. Share the video via my Facebook page, or share on some other video site and then share the link. (You could also send your song to my email below.) There are no prizes to be had other than pride of accomplishment, and pride in your alma mater, of course. The deadline is sometime in early June so that we can share on the radio before the end of the school year.
Special thanks to Rose Hill Middle School Band Director Angie Laulainen for making a new recording of the Rose Hill fight song so Bill and “Alex” had something to sing along to.
You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.
