People listen Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 during a pep rally to celebrate state athletic accomplishments at Bowling Green High School in Bowling Green, Ky. (Joshua Lindsey/Daily News)

The Bowling Green Independent School District celebrated state athletic accomplishments Monday afternoon, including Bowling Green High School’s third-straight Class 5A football championship. There were big and little Purples, and all sported their enthusiasm for their heroes and heroines.

About 3,000 high school, junior high and elementary students and their teachers chanted, clapped and cheered in the arena at BGHS during a pep rally. The rally was originally scheduled for Friday – before Sunday afternoon’s game with Pulaski County High School at Western Kentucky University. However, inclement weather canceled school Friday, so the Purple Nation held the event after the state football championship was in hand.

Principal Gary Fields said it was a moment for all kids, teachers and administrators in the district of 4,000 students to bask in a fall sports season for the record books.

“This is the best school district in the state of Kentucky,” Fields said to rousing cheers.

Coach Kevin Wallace agreed that Bowling Green was a great place to be. 

“Bowling Green doesn’t end today,” Wallace said. “It doesn’t end with this championship. I want to see you down here where these guys are,” he told the younger students.

“It’s pretty awesome to experience it all,” said BGHS senior Vanessa Bolton of Bowling Green, who played outside hitter on the Purples girls’ volleyball team. The squad won the district title for the first time in school history. 

“It just shows that we are a great school,” Bolton said. 

The girls’ volleyball team, which captured the District 14 crown, the girls’ four-time regional champion soccer team that was in the state’s final eight, the two-time state runner-up girls’ cross country team and the boys’ final four soccer team all received recognition.

The football players, who defeated Pulaski County 49-14 after being tied at 14 at halftime Sunday, gave a shout out to the elementary schools that they attended in the district, as each player took the microphone. The elementary students gave rousing cheers from each section of the arena.

Christy Wilkins, a BGHS senior, was one of 14 girls dressed as zombies who danced for the pep rally following a skit where each Purple football victory was highlighted by a cardboard tombstone for the opponent and an accompanying zombie. 

Her brother, junior Casey Wilkins, is a defensive back on the football team. She said the BGHS accomplishments extend to all the district’s schools. “We’re a family,” she said.

Malik Carothers, a BGHS junior and starting point guard on the boys’ basketball team, said the fall sports teams’ accomplishments will motivate him as he takes the court for competition. “You see the school winning as a program and you just want to continue it,” he said.

Sophia Sazo, also a BGHS junior, plans to run the 100- and 200-meter distances in track in the spring. “No other school has the privilege to say you won state three years in a row,” she said, wearing a Purples football jersey with eyeblack under her eyes. The girls in the football shirts and helmets “fought” the zombies in the skit, which ended with the zombies sprawled out on the gym floor, vanquished.

As the football season ends, Mike Riggs, whose son, Parker, played center on the football team this year, said he has a bittersweet feeling.

Parker has played football since the seventh grade, and his father said he has mixed emotions to see it all end.

“We’ve watched them play since the moments were bigger than they were,” said Riggs, a 1978 BGHS graduate. “I was a lineman like he is.”

— Follow education reporter Chuck Mason on Twitter at twitter.com/bgdnschools or at bgdailynews.com.