On Wednesdays during the winter season, you may walk home from school and oddly notice the indistinguishable sound of Lion King’s Circle of Life playing from our stadium’s loudspeakers. You remember the scene, seared into your memory—Simba, held up to the kingdom, being shown the opportunity of ruling the kingdom in his future. Intrigued, you follow the sound and discover the strange Liberty Cross Country tradition of Movie Wednesdays—in which many of our school’s team continue their training (in the dark!) while watching movies on our stadium’s scoreboard to make their runs more interesting.

Lion King, Cool Runnings, Elf, and more—they’re all up for grabs to be played on our scoreboard. Thanks to the curiosity of Liberty Distance Coach Mike Smith, we discovered the potential of playing any media on our three-year-old scoreboard during its first winter on campus and have kept the tradition going since.

Recently, however, neighborhood complaints of noise have led to problems with the tradition. Unfortunately, the scoreboards fans tend to keep neighbors up at night, so the entire board is shut down when not in use. Only qualified technicians are able to turn the scoreboard back on, proving difficulties to keep the practice strong.

Coach Smith, hoping to keep the tradition, has worked with Athletic Director Danielle Zelinski and others in the athletic department to keep this tradition alive. Thanks to them, our fun, de-stressing Movie Wednesdays have been able to survive through this year—and hopefully will for years to come.