Redwood’s 2021 Cowhide Door Decorating Competition

By: Elli Hendrickson

Redwood High School has many Cowhide traditions, one being a door decorating competition.

This Redwood tradition has been going on for so long that nobody remembers when it started.

The competition involves the students of every 2nd period working together (or in teams) to create a unique design to be put on the front of their classroom door.

The door decorating competition is hosted by the ASB teacher, Mrs. Aston, but gets judged on Friday afternoon on the day of Cowhide by various staff and administration at Redwood.

The judging panel includes Mrs.Buchanan, Mrs.Tomola, Mr.Shin, Mr.Marroquin, and Mrs.Barba-Tepper.

At the beginning of Cowhide week, all of the classes start creating different plans for their door.

Mr. Coon, the AG teacher at Redwood, says “we totally have started prepping for the competition, we have all our ideas in place.”

He adds, “we’re going, I wanna say really really big this year, but it’s more really, really, clever. We are going to do something that nobody else has ever done.”

Coon says that the competition is “always fun, but this year we plan on winning.”

Another teacher who is in it to win it is Mrs. Feehan; she was the 2019 door decorating contest winner.

Feehan says that the competition “started as just for fun, but now that I have won [in 2019] I kinda feel like I have to keep it up.”

She adds that she enjoys this tradition because it “gets the students involved, and it’s fun to see the creativity of them and other teachers and classes.”

After Cowhide finished, the 2021-2022 door decorating winner was announced: Mrs.Ramirez, a freshmen English teacher at Redwood.

The judges of the contest said Mrs. Ramirez’s door won the competition because each student listed a reason for why they love Redwood on little cows.

Mrs. Ramirez says that throughout the competition she found it as “a fun way to get the students involved, and [they] enjoyed it. I always enjoy having the students take part in these activities.”

To complete the door, it “took a couple days, so we started the little cows one day and we finished the rest of it the other day.”

Before knowing she won the competition, she said that her class was hoping to win and was “actually looking forward to it.”

She added that her students were saying, “Mrs. Ramirez, maybe we’ll win!”