At Yorkville School , it's Bears 22, colts 2
YORKVILLE -- Fox Valley fans might be banding together as the Super Bowl approaches, but Sunday's game is dividing one fourth-grade class.
"It's two to 22," says 10-year-old Tate Smock. He and Mason Lutterbach, 9, are the lone Indiana natives in Shawn Collins' class at Yorkville Intermediate School. They knew they were outnumbered in September, when Tate first noticed the Brian Urlacher poster on Collins' desk.
(Heather Eidson/Staff Photographer)
To even the scales, Tate cut out articles about Colts wins and pasted them on the classroom's dry-erase board. Collins brought in his own sports-section clippings lauding the Bears. Tate turned in spelling tests with tiny horseshoes doodled in the margins. When he got the tests back, the doodles read "Monsters of the Midway."
Last week, after the Jan. 21 conference championship games determined that the two teams would face each other, Collins draped his the room in orange streamers. Bear Down, Chicago Bears blared from his computer as students filed into class.
But when Collins arrived at school Monday morning with a Bears banner "to make sure that my statement was made," there was barely space to hang it.
Entering the classroom required fighting through a curtain of blue and white crepe paper. A banner plastered with magazine spreads of Peyton Manning reached almost from ceiling to floor. Huge construction paper letters spelled C-O-L-T-S. Blue and white streamers draped Tate's and Mason's desks.
The Smock family, which moved from Carmel, Ind., in 2003, had stayed up until midnight Friday making the decorations. Tate's mother, Tammy, even helped him doctor a copy of the class newsletter, manipulating the "Go Bears" sign-off so that it read "Bears are going down."
Collins called for backup.
With nearly two dozen loyal Chicago-area residents in his class, he did not have to look far. The fourth-graders are now spending most of their free time drawing with the blue and orange magic markers. Posters decorate the classroom door, advising the Colts to "count on losing the Super Bowl" and guaranteeing "100 percent the Bears will win."
The kids hum Bear down, Chicago Bears under their breath. Hannah Dahm, 9, is working on a banner to match her Urlacher jersey. Ten-year-old Renee gives her last name as "P-A-C-K-E-R but that doesn't mean I'm a Packers fan."
Down the hall, students from another fourth-grade class bought a Bears-themed folder, signed it and presented it to Tate.
But one kid, 9-year-old Justin Jeziorski, has a different approach. He's not stooping to try to persuade Tate and Mason that they are rooting for the wrong team. He figures what his classmates need is a geography lesson.
"They might be from Indiana," Justin says, "but they're in Illinois."