Extracurriculars are something Decatur has a lot of, from an academic team to a SDHS Surfrider club. Some may ask if extracurriculars are important, and I’m here to tell you yes, they are.

In fact, extracurricular activities will help prepare you for college and your professional future. Extracurriculars are also shown to help with mental health, because you get to meet new people, make friends, and stress less.

Not only do extracurricular activities like clubs and sports look very good on college transcripts, it’s a way to engage with our community outside of the school. Come look at some of the extracurriculars we have at Stephen Decatur High School:

Academic Team

Designed to empower students to take ownership of their own and their peers learning through a student accountability system and structures for peer support. Meets on Mondays.

“Some places call it quiz bowl, and I have a club of eight kids,” according to adviser Belinda Sawyer. “It’s trivia, kind of like Jeopardy. It covers all the different courses like science, math, English, language, literature, religion.

“Then we have the big tournament in March at Wor-Wic (Community College) every year and our school helps to sponsor. We actually got first (place) this year and last year – two years in a row!”

Leo Club

Leo Club is a service organization that encourages youth to develop leadership qualities by focusing on three core values: Leadership, Experience, and Opportunity.

Group advisers Marie Stevenson and Brittany Tracy told us that, at first, Leo Club was focused on the blind. Leo Clubs in the area would come into the school building and provide an eye checkup to people who couldn’t go to an eye doctor.

“Now we really just focus on the sense of community,” Stevenson said. “We raised money to get hats and gloves, we’ve done the child abuse walk, we’ve done a clean up, and right now we’re trying to do a movie in May to raise money for child abuse awareness. We don’t really have one particular focus, and this is our first year taking over, so its very new for us.”

Surfrider Club

Led by advisers Steve Deakyne and Mandi Wells, this club is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches through a powerful activist network.

Mrs. Wells told us: “Our Surfrider Club is kind of like the environmental club in the building. Our main goal for Surfrider is to help our school maintain a positive environment impact on the building.

“We plan clean-ups, we plan Earth Week activities, we advocate for legislation that helps our environment and our oceans. We do anything that we can do to help protect the environment,” she added.