Senior Asher Friedman skids across the gym floor while playing ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’ in a rally last fall in the Peery Center Gym at Palo Alto High School. This year, as a result of a volleyball lodged in the bleachers, rallies in the gym have been moved outdoors. According to girls’ volleyball coach Chris Crader, the ball is preventing the bleachers from expanding, making one side of the gym unusable to seat students. “Once the bleachers get sideways, they don’t go in or out,” Crader said. (Photo: Daniel Garepis-Holland)

In the midst of high 80-degree weather, lunchtime Spirit Week rallies scheduled to be in the Peery Center Gym have been shifted to the Palo Alto High School football field for the rest of the week after a volleyball lodged in a retraction mechanism of the gym bleachers Monday night.

“When they were closing the bleachers, there was a volleyball underneath the bleachers,” Steven Gallagher, Associated Student Body teacher, told The Paly Voice today. “The volleyball stopped that section of the bleachers, but the rest of the bleachers kept going and broke the bleachers.” 

Gallagher said the broken bleachers caused some of the Spirit Week activities scheduled for the Big Gym to be reorganized.  

“’Hungry Hungry Hippos’ was canceled because you need a gym floor for that,” Gallagher said. “We kept the games for Tuesday, and we just had to re-set them up because you have to design something based on the space you have.”

Girls’ volleyball coach Chris Crader said the bleachers are expected to be fixed tomorrow and it is common for volleyballs to get stuck in the bleachers during practices and matches. 

“When we’re warming up, there’s a whole bunch of girls serving and hitting and there’s balls flying everywhere,” Crader said. “Every now and then, a volleyball does get into that little gap on top of the wall. We fished one out Monday night that was not too far in there and we pulled it out, but then somebody else said they saw another ball back there.” 

Despite this inconvenience, Gallagher said moving locations was not a huge hassle and allowed for additional rally activities, like ‘Giant Cornhole.’

“We’re fortunate because there’s a new sound system in the stadium, which works really nice, so that makes things a little bit easier to do on the football field,” Gallagher said.

Senior Diya Lansberg said although the hot weather made the change an inconvenience, the rally was still enjoyable. 

“I would have preferred the rally to be in the Big Gym because it was really hot outside today,” Lansberg said. “I’m also sad we didn’t get to do ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’ because it’s a tradition from all the years I’ve been going to Paly, but at the same time we did a lot of really fun games and had a lot of good spirit, especially the seniors.”