The cheerleaders encourage the crowd at the Oct. pep rally. The winter pep rally will be held on Fri. Jan. 13th.
By Adam Blakemore
You stand in a crowd of your friends and classmates, and you are all yelling as loud as you possibly can. The players down on the court are basking in the glory, while all of the energy in the room is infecting everyone, whipping everyone into a cheering frenzy.
The pep rally on Fri. Jan. 13 is to introduce the winter sports teams, with focus on the basketball team since the varsity boys have a game against Hopewell at 7:15 PM. The pep rally is being sponsored by the Student Government Association, or SGA, who plan to make it the best one this year.
The goal of the pep rally is to advertise the basketball game, and to show some love for the winter teams’ athletes, and for the county. The other purpose of the pep rally is to get all the students involved, especially the ones who normally are not.
According to senior and SGA Spirit committee chairman Carrie Young, the SGA’s main goal is to teach its members about being a leader and taking charge of their peers. And since the members of the association are students, they know what their fellow teenagers are looking for in a pep rally, making them the perfect planners for the event.
“SGA is all about student government. They’re the leaders of this school so running the pep rally is really important for student government to do,” Young said. “They know what the kids want from the rest of the school and they know what the kids want to see in a pep rally rather than teachers planning it.”
However, Young will not be in attendance at the pep rally, with senior Fontaine Bland taking her spot. According to Bland, this will not change the way the pep rally is run, because they are loosely scripted in advance.
“The script is not set in stone. It’s more of an outline, so there might be a little bit of confusion,” Bland said. “But it’s enough to give everyone an idea of what to do, so this should all go well.”
The planned entertainment will consist of the Royalette dancers and the Step team, as well as the cheerleading squad and games put on by the SGA. The SGA Spirit Committee plans to have basketball related games, like getting the starters from both the boy’s and girl’s team to play, either against each other, or audience members. They also plan to have a half-court shot competition, letting players show their skills on the court.
Pep rallies can be put on without costing the school any money, and it is a way to bring energy to the students. The athletes get recognition from the whole student body. so they provide a great way to raise student’s pride in their school.
It is no easy task to put on a pep rally. Planning starts right after the last pep rally ends, but the preparations do not start until two to three weeks before the rally. About thirty minutes before hand, the Spirit Committee and the emcee set up the gym and prepare for all the students to arrive.
“We’ve had good pep rallies and bad pep rallies. The first one wasn’t that great. Not that many people were excited about it, but the Homecoming one was awesome,” Young said. “So much energy was in that gym, and I’m hoping that this pep rally will be just as good as homecoming.”