Nine students arrived on campus this morning before sunrise for a chance to be on live TV and to promote their artwork in the Vans Custom Culture competition. The team of artists placed in the Top 50 out of 3,000 schools. Art teacher Mrs. Deborah Lane provided coffee and doughnuts before their live interview with “Good Day Sacramento” and helped students prepare for an on-camera demonstration. Students learned about the TV appearance yesterday and spent some of their school day preparing.

“We decided on what to sketch and started to paint the shoes beforehand. [On Thursday] we talked over what we were going to say in the interview. I missed leadership and intervention to practice for today’s interview.  My favorite part about the competition was definitely seeing what we can achieve, and I was blown away with how awesome they look. I helped with the sports shoe; it was complicated but with a general idea in mind it got easier,” Melissa Lombardo said.

Morning traffic caused a bit of a delay, so students hung out and discussed their artwork with nervous anticipation, but around 6:30 a.m. the Good Day Sacramento crew arrived, set up and started filming the live segment. On camera, Sydney Pefferman taught reporter Krystie Rich some basics about painting.

“I didn’t know about the interview until yesterday, and I’m in charge of the painting demonstration. I was nervous but really excited about it. It was a great experience for us to get the courage to be on the news. It’s a good opportunity to get recognized for all of our hard work. Personally I enjoyed painting the most, but the results were great. too,” Pefferman said.

The group also had to coordinate which shoes to paint and what theme to develop, as well as prepare the room to look its best.

“We decided to have the news crew paint a Whitney theme for school pride and just for the sake of ‘Go vote for Whitney’! It feels good to be part of this competition, especially because we’re able to make Top 50 out of 3,000. I painted parts of two shoes. It was really stressful, but we had a lot of people working on them. We had five other people paint and three from marketing who originally proposed the idea and worked with design,” Sara Sage said.

Voting in the competition has been extended until May 11 due to website difficulties at customculture.vans.com, and students can cast their vote daily.

by MORGAN HAWKINS