Crowds were roaring as Spirit Week continued with the second annual Night Rally, which featured a neon color theme, with a Best Dressed competition, an intense six-station Relay Race and the Human-Sized Hamster Ball Race.

Traditionally, the Wednesday of Spirit Week has been Color Day. However, due to the Practice Standardized Aptitude Test administered to the juniors this morning, there was no daytime Spirit Week rally. Instead, the Associated Student Body launched the Night Rally, where students wore neon class colors, with seniors wearing green, while juniors wore yellow, sophomores dressed in red and freshmen decked out in orange.

The first event of the night was the highly contentious Relay Race. With 1,500 points on the line, the seniors pulled ahead at the last minute to win the event. The race was made up of six stations: the ball hop, army crawl, skin the snake, balloon pop, tarp carry and the exciting puzzle station, where the seniors defeated the sophomores in the final round.

By a random hat draw, the seniors and freshmen were chosen to compete first, with the seniors taking an early lead and quickly defeating the freshmen. In a tight race, the sophomores beat the juniors, sending the juniors to the consolation round, where the freshmen were victorious.

“I think we did pretty [well], because we had a lot of spirit, and we tried our best,” freshman Naomi Jecker said. “[Beating the juniors] was pretty epic, and we are very proud.”

Paly’s cheer and dance team both performed between the two activities.

This year, ASB made some changes to the Human Sized Hamster Ball Race. Unlike last year’s giant hamster ball, which only featured one person per class, this year’s race included a handoff between two players after the first person reached the end zone.

With the juniors and seniors first up to race, the juniors pulled ahead at the last minute, while the freshmen barely edged out the sophomores in the last five yards. Despite falling out of the hamster ball, the senior class narrowly defeated the sophomores in the third round, but were unfortunately disqualified due to having two males compete rather than the required male and female.

After getting last place in the Relay Race, the juniors redeemed themselves with a first place victory in the Hamster Ball.

“Tonight was probably the best night that the Class of 2018 has ever had, we didn’t start strong and it was easy to get discouraged, but we were still chanting and cheering louder than all the other grades,” Junior Class President Jaiveer Sandhu said. “The pressure was on and [the hamster ball participants] got first place and they came up big for the grade when we needed it the most.”

Total points will be posted on the ASB website later tonight. Spirit Week will continue tomorrow with Generation Day. Check The Paly Voice for more updates on Spirit Week 2016.