All schools have spirit and pride and KHS has an outstanding amount of both. During pep rallies and in the locker room before games, a resonating chant echoes that we are the best school in Missouri. However, we have to take a step back every once in awhile and ask ourselves, is our school truly and honestly unbeatable?
When I look at KHS from an academic standpoint, I must say that we’re rather good, but we aren’t number one. Our school ranked third out of  560 public schools in the Missouri area according to the website US News.com’s article “Top Ranked MO Schools.” The rankings were decided upon four categories: “Students/Teachers,” “College Readiness,” “Algebra,” and “English.” But from a national perspective, KHS ranked in at 453, while the top ranked Missouri school, Metro Academic and Classical High School clocked in at rank 135 on the national level. Though that may be an outstanding position to uphold, it still contradicts the “KHS is number one” claim.
When evaluating our school’s quality, I can’t possibly forget sports. You could say Kirkwood is unquestionably the best thanks to our Class 5 Championship football title, however, one should remember that it took 114 years to do so. Even though other Kirkwood teams have been close to a State Championship, they always seem to be shot down by other, more competitive teams like CBC or SLUH.
KHS isn’t the only school to claim superiority. Private schools such CBC and SLUH .While schools such as Oakville make signs that say “Our House” to declare they’re the powerhouse school in Missouri. If you’ve ever looked at a ranking system before, you’ll know there can be only one top rank. Both KHS and Oakville can’t be number one.
The point is, although we may brag of KHS’s “perfection,” we all know there are those few high schools that will beat us from time to time. However, this competition is what gives our school some of it’s team spirit, because we know that there will be a school that’s a tad better than us. Even though no school may never truly be “the best,” it’s always nice to have rival schools to butt heads with.