Sidney Lanier High School is a local high school of the San Antonio Independent School District

San Antonio Independent School District

San Antonio Independent School District is a school district based in Downtown San Antonio, Texas .San Antonio ISD is one of 15 school districts serving San Antonio. San Antonio ISD serves the downtown and inner city areas of San Antonio. San Antonio ISD also serves a small portion of the city of...

 in the westside of San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

. Serving the San Antonio Independent School District, Lanier boasts an enrollment of approximately 1400 students.

History

Sidney Lanier High School first opened in 1915 as McKinley Elementary School. In 1923, McKinley was renamed Sidney Lanier in accordance with the District's practice of naming the junior schools after American authors. Lanier became a junior-senior high school in 1929 until 1969 when Tafolla Middle School opened. The new Lanier Campus on the site of the old school opened in 1975. Sidney Lanier High School serves 9th through 12th grade students.

Traditions

Their mascot is a Vok which is short for a vocational student as Lanier was San Antonio's first vocational high school. A gear emblem represents the Voks symbolizing a smaller part of a big machine which without that would not be able to function, analogous to a vocational student entering society and the workforce.

The schools most popular event, "The Chili Bowl", is an annual football game played every year with rival Fox Tech High School since 1932. However, the district announced in November 2009 that it would discontinue sports at Fox Tech as part of its plan to convert Fox Tech into a magnet school (football to be discontinued after the 2009-2010 year, and the remaining sports after two more years), thus ending the event after 2009. The Lanier Voks ended up winning the last game over the Buffaloes, 30 to 14. Afterwards both of the teams gathered in the center of Alamo Stadium

Alamo Stadium

Alamo Stadium is a horseshoe-shaped football stadium in San Antonio, Texas. Nicknamed "the rock pile" due to its primarily limestone construction it was completed in September 1940 as a Works Progress Administration project. The stadium is currently owned and operated by the San Antonio Independent...

, the place where this historic event was held, and took time to reflect on what this tradition meant to them, and how it felt to take part in this game. They joined in a chant, "Brothers!" and left after few photo-ops