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by Blake Seitz
Sports Editor
‘Good morning, CHS.’
We hear these three words every day on the announcements, but rarely take the time to consider the people behind the words.
In truth, it is members of the Red Jackets—Coppell’s hospitality and service group—who are tasked with carrying out the announcements every day.
The Red Jackets are given a schedule at the very beginning of the year outlining which weeks they will give announcements. The weekly shifts are broken into two groups, comprised of two Red Jackets each: the first pair gives the announcements on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the second pair picks up Tuesday and Thursday.
“I always knew Red Jackets did the announcements, but I didn’t know they did them so often!” senior Red Jacket Peyton Porter said.
Sometimes this scheduling can cause problems—every once in a while, Red Jackets will forget to show up. When this happens, the second member of the pair (or, if both forget, receptionist Carol Green) goes ‘fishing’ in the hallways to find another Red Jacket.
Usually the method works, but it is certainly cumbersome. To fix this, next year an ‘alternate’ Red Jacket may be assigned to announcements on a given week, to fill in if another Red Jacket forgets.
Even if both Red Jackets remember to show up, the announcements are still a complicated process. The Public Address (P.A.) system (really a phone handset attached to the intercom) used, for example, must be held the correct distance from the speaker’s mouth—otherwise, there will be sharp feedback or no sound at all.
“There’s definitely an art to doing the announcements,” senior Red Jacket Kevin Rutledge said. “It’s really tricky to get everything right.”
Even the script can be difficult to decipher. Typos are common in the script, so Red Jackets have to correct mistakes in their head (and in their speech) as they go.
Other pressures notwithstanding, Red Jackets also have to deal with the nervousness inherent in speaking for the entire school to hear.
Often, this is the biggest pressure of all for the Red Jackets. As time goes by, though, many have found the announcements become easier and easier to deliver. Most of this can be attributed to the routine of things—although complicated, the process is fairly uniform.
And in the end, most Red Jackets admit having learned something from the experience.
“It helps me with public speaking because I’m talking to the whole school, so I have to enunciate clearly,” Porter said. “It’s a great skill to have.”
