Wannabe trendy eighties icons with funky ponytails, nerds with tight pants and giant glasses, glamorous movie stars, and Pepperidge farmers populated the wooden bleachers of the main quad to commence this year’s Spirit Week festivities. Through consistently fair performance, the sophomores, disguised as celebrities, temporarily secured first place and overcame the common bias towards seniors.

The rally opened with the presentation of teachers who had worn black, flashy jewelry, and bandannas to impersonate rock stars and rappers in compliance with the day’s theme.

Immediately after applauding teachers for their spirit, seniors chanted creative spirit cheers, and the younger classes retaliated with their own innovative yells. An impressive number of energized seniors, clad in leggings and baggy shirts, filled the benches and dominated in the first event: the orange pass.

“There was a great overall turnout at the rally,” senior class president Sahar Raz said. “The seniors look great – you can tell they’ve been looking forward to this for four years.”

“Everyone really got into it,” senior Abbie Havern agreed. “I’m proud that everyone showed their spirit.”

The freshmen on the other hand, clad in overalls and cowboy hats, made a somewhat weak performance in the rally, according to many observers.

“I wish there was more freshman participation,” freshman Elena Kasianova said.

During the first competition, each class selected two boys and two girls to work together to pass, consume, and drink an orange. The first two people passed the orange using their necks and handed it to the third contestant, who voraciously consumed it. As soon as the orange had been devoured, the person at the front of the line immediately rushed to drink orange juice inside a bucket waiting for them at the end of the line.

The seniors landed in first place, followed by the sophomores and then the juniors. The freshmen failed to finish the race and did not receive any points.

The chaotic sponge pass immediately followed the intense orange pass. Four boys and girls from each class lined up behind a bucket filled with watery sponges. Each of the classes passed back a fixed number of sponges in an undulating fashion, until they would reached the end of the line and threw back the sponge. Students repeated this process until they ran out of sponges.

Disputes arose when senior and junior participants started roughhousing each other and attempted to steal each other’s sponges. Consequently, both the junior and senior representatives were disqualified from the event, allowing sophomores to claim first place and freshmen follow in second.

Despite this disappointing setback in points, the disqualified upperclasses remained calm and spirited.

“It was lame that the juniors got disqualified [during the sponge activity], but it was a great start to spirit week,” junior participant Cat Chiang said.

The rally concluded with invigorating shoutouts from each class. The junior class redeemed their previous performance by placing first in this event. The senior class commenced the Paly cheer, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit, How about you?” and the freshmen class finished off with weak spirit, inciting laughter from the crowd and disappointment from other freshmen.

Due to their consistent performance in each of the events, sophomores now lead the competition.

Point Totals through Day 1:

Sophomores – 175

Seniors – 100

Juniors – 75

Freshmen – 65