Rumbling cheers, earsplitting music, and the scent of freshly cut grass and grilled hotdogs filled the Howard Ray stadium with zest and spirit.
Paly’s Spirit Week 2005 satisfactorily concluded at 5 p.m. on Friday after five fun events.
“I think it was a very successful after-school rally,” Student Activities Director Joann Vaars said. “It has been a fun time.”
The first game, a hula-hoop contest, placed three girls and three boys from each class in a line. While holding hands, the six students had to pass the hula-hoop from one side to another and back again. Filled with frenzied excitement, the classes cheered their teams on. After moments of twisting and turning, the teams sat on the field and awaited the results: Seniors finished first, sophomores second, juniors third, and freshmen finished last.
“We knew that we would lose,” freshman Ariel Arsac-Ellison said. “The most important thing is that we had fun and we tried.”
To unite Paly after a dividing game, hip-hop dance team Hipnotik performed. The group had nearly doubled in size since its performance during the 2004 Spirit Week. Like last year, Hipnotik wowed the general student body and temporarily caused the classes to forget their rivalry.
Once Hipnotik’s music and dance stopped, students were back at war — tug-o-war. In the preliminary rounds, the juniors faced off against the freshmen while the seniors fought the sophomores. After quick defeats, the sophomores and freshmen were placed against each other. The sophomores pulled the freshmen over the line to come in third place and made way for the upperclassmen. The juniors beat the seniors in less than a minute.
After the tug-o-war, a group of teachers dressed in jerseys and sunglasses did their annual Teacher Spirit Dance. Stepping and swaying to Ciara, the teachers entertained their students.
“Remember, laugh with us, not at us,” performer and English teacher Kaye Paugh told students before the rally.
According to Paugh, the teachers practiced the dance for several days before the Spirit Rally.
“For that I’d give them an A for effort,” junior Eric Chen said.
Not to be outdone by their teachers, student teams also danced after pulling their floats onto the track. The floats proceeded in the rally with two incidents of interest. First, the sophomores’ float slightly fell apart minutes before entering the show. However, students were able to fix the problem before the float came into the audience’s view.
“I thought we did a really good job this year,” sophomore Michael Williams said. “We were pretty creative.”
Creativity became apparent during the second incident of interest. The seniors’ Sprite bottle intentionally rolled off of the main float toward the sophomores. Then an unseen student inside of the bottle attempted to spray water on the sophomores resulting in a few outcries and a number of laughs.
In the end, the rally left students appreciative of Spirit Week and Paly.
“[Spirit Week] is a great time to bring the student body together and bring out our pride for this school,” junior Justin Takamine said.