Sun Prairie East High School (SPEHS) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Sun Prairie, Wisconsin Sun Prairie is a city in Dane County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. A suburb of Madison, it is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 35,967 at the 2020 U.S. Census. It is the second-most populous city in Da ...

, United States. It is one of two high schools in the Sun Prairie Area School District, the other being

Sun Prairie West High School Sun Prairie West High School (SPWHS) is a high school in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, United States. It is one of two high schools in the Sun Prairie Area School District, the other being Sun Prairie East High School. During the 2022-2023 school yea ...

. During the 2022-2023 school year, there were 1,365 students at Sun Prairie East High School. SPEHS is a WIAA Division 1 school and is a member of the Big Eight athletic conference in all sports except for football, in which it is a WIAA Division 2 school and a member of the

Badger Conference The Badger Conference is a high school athletic conference comprising 16 high schools in south-central Wisconsin. Established in 1951, the Badger Conference is a member of the WIAA. Member schools Badger West Conference Northwest Division * B ...

. 2011 In the summer of 2010, Sun Prairie High School moved to a new building in the southeast part of town. The former school became a combined 8th and 9th grade upper middle school and was named Cardinal Heights Upper Middle School. Cardinal Heights later became a 6th-8th grade middle school and was renamed to Central Heights Middle School. In 2022, the school split into 2 high schools,

and Sun Prairie East High School, with SPWHS getting a new campus on Ironwood Drive and SPEHS keeping the Grove Street Campus.

Extracurricular activities

Athletics

Sun Prairie East includes a 4-court competition fieldhouse that seats 2,100, an 8-lane olympic-size swimming pool, a weight room, a cardio room, a wrestling room, and has an indoor track inside the fieldhouse. Sun Prairie East plays home

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

, and

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

games at Bank of Sun Prairie Stadium at Ashley Field, a multi-purpose stadium that seats 4,000. The stadium was built in 2022 to replace the original Ashley Field that was built in 1953 on the same site, 155 Kroncke Drive. SPEHS shares the venue with Sun Prairie West. The stadium features aluminum bleachers, team rooms, a multi-purpose synthetic turf field with team colors of both high schools, 2 concession stands, multiple restroom facilities, and ample parking. The SPHS hockey team, a joint team with SPWHS, plays at the Sun Prairie Ice Arena on Grove Street.

State championships before split (as Sun Prairie High School)

* Baseball: 1974, 1994, 1997, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2021 * Bowling: 2015, 2016 * Cross Country (girls): 2016, 2017 * Football: 1995 * Golf (boys): 1991 * Hockey: 1997 * Softball: 2018

Academic Decathlon

Sun Prairie's Academic Decathlon team has placed in the top three at the Wisconsin state finals five times. In April 2014, the Sun Prairie Academic Decathlon team represented Wisconsin in the Large School division of the National United States Academic Decathlon online national competition taking fifth place among the large schools. They repeated this in 2016.

Music

Sun Prairie East includes a

Performing Arts Center Performing arts center/centre (see spelling differences), often abbreviated as PAC, is used to refer to: * A multi-use performance space that is intended for use by various types of the performing arts, including dance, music and theatre. :The ...

(PAC) that seats 1,044. The PAC's 2,400 square-foot stage features a 23-line fly system with a full fly loft, an

orchestra pit An orchestra pit is the area in a theater (usually located in a lowered area in front of the stage) in which musicians perform. Orchestral pits are utilized in forms of theatre that require music (such as opera and ballet) or in cases when incide ...

with a removable cover, and a custom-made Wenger Diva acoustical shell system. The PAC is also home to a Steinway D

Concert Grand Piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

. The Sun Prairie High School Jazz I has been selected to compete in the Essentially Ellington Jazz Band competition in New York City 12 times since the festival's conception, most recently in 2023. When SPHS split into two, Jazz I became a joint extracurricular between Sun Prairie East High School and

The SPHS theatre department has been nominated for numerous Jerry Awards for both their cast and crew.

Notable alumni

Gary Hebl Gary Alan Hebl (born May 15, 1951) is an American lawyer, businessman, and Democratic politician from Dane County, Wisconsin. He was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly for 18 years, representing the 46th Assembly district from 2005 throu ...

, class of 1969 (before split);

Wisconsin State Assembly The Wisconsin State Assembly is the lower house of the Wisconsin Legislature. Together with the smaller Wisconsin Senate, the two constitute the legislative branch of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Representatives are elected for two-year terms, ...

, 2005-present *

John A. List John August List (born September 25, 1968) is an American economist known for establishing field experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis. He works at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Se ...

, class of 1987 (before split);

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

economist *

Thomas A. Loftus Thomas A. Loftus (born April 24, 1945)Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau (comp.). State of Wisconsin 1989-1990 Blue Book'. Madison: Wisconsin Department of Administration, 1989, p. 53. is a retired American diplomat and politician from Wiscon ...

(Graduated before split); Wisconsin Legislator and

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

; Ambassador to Norway, 1993-1997 *

Steven Quale Steven Quale is an American film director, known for ''Final Destination 5'' and ''Into the Storm (2014 film), Into the Storm'', as well as his earlier work as a second unit director for James Cameron. Filmography Director *''Darkness'' (1988) * ...

, class of 1984 (before split);

Hollywood film The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some independent film, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of Ame ...

director * Andy Thompson, class of 1994 (before split); major league baseball player with the

Toronto Blue Jays The Toronto Blue Jays are a Canadian professional baseball team based in Toronto. The Blue Jays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Since 1989, the team has played its home games ...

, 2000

References

External links

* {{authority control Public high schools in Wisconsin Schools in Dane County, Wisconsin