To those of you who don’t know, Kenston Local Schools is located in two townships just outside of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. And if you didn’t know where Chagrin Falls is, then Kenston is a school district in a suburb of Cleveland. I graduated from Kenston last year, class of 2015, and even though I went off to college, I know I’m still a Bomber (our mascot). These are ways to know that you are and always will be a Kenston Bomber at heart.
1. You know 99 percent of your class.
Although Kenston isn’t a small school, about 250 kids per grade means that if you’ve been attending Kenston from kindergarten to 12th grade, you know pretty much know everyone in your class. The one percent is taking account for the handful of transfer students you didn’t even know about until graduation.
2. You refer to teachers, staff and proctors by their first names -- but not to their face.
3. When transitioning from the middle school to the high school, you accidentally keep calling “homeroom," “Bombertime.”
4. Football games are a huge affair rain or shine.
At Kenston, you’re either a football player, cheerleader, in the marching band or in the student section. After graduating, if you have an opportunity to come back for even one game a year, you take it. There’s something about the Bainbridge and Auburn communities coming together that brings so much energy to the stadium.
5. People from other places look at you weird when you tell them our mascot is a Bomber plane.
Our unique mascot gives us a couple of stares, but that’s is what makes us unique!
6. Anything versus Chagrin gets a lot of attention by which I mean the Chagrin Tigers, our rival school.
The Chagrin Tigers, our rival school right down the road, are the gum off of Kenston’s shoe. When we’re playing Chagrin, it’s on. Expect the student section to be full. Although we’re enemies, we all know at least one person from Chagrin that we get along with.
7. Some years, snow days are few and far in between.
Kenstonians get snow days when we don’t expect them and we don’t get show days when we do expect. Any public school in the snow belt laughs when a southern state gets a dusting of snow and doesn’t know how to function. Kenston, just like most schools in snowy states, braves through the ice covered roads and the snowy wind to school. It’s no biggie, we’re used to it.
8. When the marching band plays the fight song, you can’t help to sing or to dance along.
9. When you were in middle school, you went to the library after school to hangout.
Yeah, not everyone did this, but when the choice was going home versus hanging out with your friends at the library, you’d rather go to the library.
10. Everyone looked forward to the trips we went on in middle school.
In sixth grade we went to Chicago, although after my year I know the trip was changed. In seventh grade we all went to camp for a week. And in eighth grade we went to Washington, D.C. Getting dirty and being eaten by mosquitoes while at camp in the seventh grade camp are some of the memories I’ll always treasure.
11. You ran to lunch on the days they had dunkers or chicken nuggets.
You have to get in line before it gets too long!
12. You avoided the tiny hall way in the middle school and hated your life if you had a locker in that hallway.
13. You know who Childress is.
Mrs. Ann Childress was one of the proctors at Kenston High that was well known for being blunt, calling girls out for their yoga pants and everyone for having a hat on. She sadly passed a couple years ago, but she is not easily forgotten.
14. Coming out of Kenston, you realize how well it prepared you to go out into the world.
At least for me, Kenston had all the tools I needed to be successful. Compared to other schools, Kenston prepares students well. I’m and to be, and always be, a Kenston Bomber.
