Former NL resident aiding school's effort in shoe-decorating contest

By BROOKS TAYLOR

Mt. Pleasant News

A former New London student is hoping that his design on a canvas tennis shoe helps his new school ? West Marshall High School in State Center ? place high in a national contest.

Cole Needham, son of Kristen Alderson-Needham (who is a New London native and graduate of New London High School), is among four designers of tennis shoes that recently were announced as two of Iowa?s semi-finalist high schools. Needham is also the grandson of Brenda Cole Alderson-Davey, a New London native, now living in Crawfordsville.

The younger Needham attended New London schools through third grade before moving to Melbourne.

Lori Sogge, West Marshall 6-12th grade art instructor, said the idea for entering the contest began in January. ?Back in January, a few of my high school art students came to me requesting to register them into the Van?s Custom Culture Contest,? Sogge recounted.

The first 2,000 schools registering each received four different pairs of white canvas shoes to be pained by high school art students. Each school was required to design the shoes in four themes: extreme sport, music, art and local favor.

Each pair of shoes was to represent one theme only and shoes were to be uniquely designed specifically for the contest, Sogge explained. Once the shoes designs were completed, they were photographed individually and as a group of four.

?Digital photographs (of the shoes) were submitted and schools were placed into one of the five geographical regions prearranged by Van?s,? Sogge continued. ?West Marshall High School was placed into the northwest region of the competition that is shared with 10 other states.?

Shoes were evaluated by Van?s employees based on overall creativity, relevance to theme and impact and statement. The initial round of judging narrowed the 2,000 original schools to 50 or 10 schools per the five regions.

Needham, a West Marshall sophomore, designed the extreme sport shoes.

West Marshall was announced as one of the 50 national semifinalists on April 25.

Finalists will be chosen through an online public vote with a deadline of May 12 Eastern time. The school with the most electronic votes per region is invited to the Vans Custom Culture Finals in New York City June 9-12. A secret panel of celebrity judges will evaluate the final five schools? Vans shoes to determine the overall winner, local flavor winner and runners-up.

The five regional winners will be given $20,000 to transport and house students and chaperones for the finals in New York City. Four runners-up will receive a donation of $4,000 each for their school?s art program, one local flavor winner will receive a $10,000 donation and the overall best school team of Van?s shoes receives a donation of $50,000 to its art program.

?A Van?s donation allows for dreams to be discussed among my art students,? Sogge said. ?There is an overwhelming desire here to develop a fine arts photography program. Cameras, computers, software, lighting and backdrop equipment would need to be purchased. The finals? runners-up donation of $4,000 could be a substantial start to such a program.?

Those who wish to vote for West Marshall should go to: http://sites.vans.com/customculture/vote/. Once at the website, they should click on northwest region, click on West Marshall High School and type in word/number code provided on the website. You can only vote once per IP address, per region.