Spirit Week inspires friendly competition between grades

The week of April 9 was Schreiber’s spring Spirit Week. The student body participated in the week’s events by dressing up to match their grade’s themes. From Christmas tree pajamas to the grunge of the 90s, the students of Schreiber went all out in hopes of winning for their grade. 

In preparation for Spirit Week, the Spirit Club spent many of their meetings organizing the daily events. 

“The student organizers and I began planning in the fall and their ideas and enthusiasm helped make the 2018 event amazing. We had more volunteers than ever before to help create and design the lobby signs and banners, as well as work on the crew during the pep rally,” said faculty coordinator Mrs. Foster-Holzer.

Monday saw the first day of the week-long event, welcoming all students to spend the school day in their pajamas in order to score points for their grade’s total score.  Each day of Spirit Week, students could also gain points for their grade by wearing the color selected for their grade on that day.

The next theme was sports day. Each grade was assigned a different sport.  The freshmen dressed in baseball attire, sophomores wore soccer jerseys, juniors dressed up in football-related clothes, and the seniors wore basketball apparel. 

On Wednesday, the theme was holidays. The freshmen dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day, the sophomores for Valentine’s Day, the juniors decked out for the winter holidays, and the seniors for the Fourth of July.

The theme for the following day was Decades Day.  The freshmen participated by traveling back in time to the 1950s, the sophomores to the 60s, the juniors to the 90s, and the seniors to the vibrant and colorful 80s.

“Although competing against the other grades may be stressful, it’s so exciting to get together with your class and participate in challenges, dress up, and do all sorts of fun activities throughout the week,” said sophomore Josie Harris.  

Finally, the biggest event of the week: Pep Rally.  After the end of sixth period, the freshmen and juniors dressed up in white, while the sophomores and seniors dressed up in blue.

Pep rally began with the two MCs, seniors Caroline McCarthy and Jenny Valenti, driving in on the Vikings golf cart, then broke out into a dance with the Portettes. 

“Getting the opportunity to MC was super fun, especially getting to do it with Jenny!  A lot of thought and effort went into planning our entrance and we couldn’t have done it without the help of the Portettes,” said McCarthy.

Pep Rally continued with activities such as “hungry hungry hippos,” where students slid on scooters as they tried to collect the highest amount of balls into their team’s basket.  Another activity played required three students to participate in a race to see who could drink a large iced tea and eat a bagel in the quickest amount of time.  

In addition, a new event this year consisted of students eating a fruit roll-up with no hands.  Once the first student finished the roll up, the second and third student would begin to eat theirs and try to finish it as quickly as possible. 

The final event in the”battle of the classes” was tug-of-war. The first round was the freshmen vs. the juniors, which led to the juniors advancing to the final round.

Next, the sophomores rallied against the seniors.  After the seniors won, they went onto challenge the juniors in a close final round.  In the end, the juniors came out victorious.

Once the final scores were calculated, the placement of each grade was announced.  The sophomores finished in fourth place, the juniors in third, the freshmen in second, and the seniors in first place.   

 “Pep Rally is definitely the best day of Spirit Week.  I love how all the classes get excited to dress up and go all out with costumes and face paint, and also participate in challenges and activities while competing against the other grades,” said Harris. 

Spirit Week is always a very festive week and a great way to come back to school after spring break.  Between the wacky wardrobes, creative themes, and friendly competition, many students agree that Spirit Week is always one of the highlights of the year.