CAPTION: The senior class claim the Mana Cup during half-time of the Boys Basketball Homecoming game. Photograph by Ava Quinlan (’28)
“P-A-R-T-Y,” the party was on the seniors’ side this year as they took home the annual Mana Cup for being the most spirited class of Spirit Week 2026.
The seniors outscored the second-place sophomores by 15 points, buoyed by their winning Pepper Squad performance and an almost perfect participation score for dress-ups. For the rest of the categories, the seniors were neck and neck with the freshmen in a two-way tie for both the Mascot and Banner rankings. The final rankings went as follows: the middle school placed 5th with 193 points, the freshmen placed 4th with 213 points, the juniors placed 3rd with 251 points, the sophomores placed 2nd with 278 points, and the seniors finished 1st with 293 points.
Drew Lohr, Student Council president and a senior, felt gratified with the results. “After four years of Spirit Week, I would say that this one is probably the most rewarding. It’s our final year, and it’s great to see my class come together one last time to compete before we graduate. I’m just glad we ended it with a win and had fun as a class,” he said. Spirit Week kicked off in the second week back from winter break, and the first competition of the week was Platform Jam. To the high schoolers’ surprise, the middle schoolers won the event, fitting 70 students onto the platform. The seniors secured second place with 69 students on the platform. After tallying up the dress-up scores for the first day, the seniors were in first place overall, with the juniors and sophomores trailing not far behind.
TUG-OF-WAR
Competition the next day was arguably the most intense of the week. Tug-of-War was the main event, and the seniors, who had managed to keep an undefeated record in the past three years of competition, were eager to solidify their reign as Tug-of-War champs. However, in a turn of events, the senior girls lost their match to the junior girls. Katherine Butay, a junior, remembers feeling extremely “proud and accomplished” with the win. “We knew that the seniors had been undefeated, so I felt really excited for the girls who participated. They just wanted to put up a good fight, and surprisingly they came out with the win,” she said.
The senior boys managed to win their round against their junior counterparts, but it was clear to the seniors that a Spirit Week victory would not come easily. Tanner Hankey, a senior and Spirit Week emcee, said, “I was very surprised that the junior girls won. I didn’t think that we’d lose, especially when we’ve won pretty much every year. But the boys won, so I think at this point we’re 7–1 for Tug-of-War.” Kate Iida, who was on the senior girls’ team, remembers the loss as being a motivating factor for the rest of the week. “Yeah, after seeing the girls lose and also just how unenergetic our grade was, I think it really motivated us to try as hard as we did last year. Our grade as a whole is pretty competitive, so losing is never an option when it comes to events like this,” she said. By the end of the second day, the seniors and juniors came out with five points apiece, and the sophomores were the only ones to earn all 10 points for Tug-of-War.
BOX STACKING
The third day of Spirit Week introduced a new game, Box Stacking. Students had to make the tallest stack of boxes in an allotted time. At this point in the week, the juniors were riding close to the senior class in terms of points. Leina Wong, a junior and Student Council Public Relations Officer, recalled her class’s mindset going into the competition, saying, “After seeing how close we were to the seniors, I think our class felt obligated to go hard on this day in order to get as many points as possible. That was probably the wrong move, though, since it didn’t really work out in our favor.” In an effort to gain more points, the junior class attempted to stack nine boxes, one more than any other grade. However, their boxes fell down within the last three seconds of the timed competition. As a result, the juniors received only six points for the event, the least of all the grades. This enabled the senior class to widen the point gap from the juniors.
PEPPER SQUAD
The fourth and most important day of the week (in terms of points at stake) featured the Pepper Squad assembly. Each class was tasked with writing and performing an eight-minute-long skit that brought to life the characters of an assigned board game. After weeks of preparation, including scriptwriting, rehearsals, and prop-making, each grade was eager to share their board game story with the student body. Tobi Tengan, a freshman, played the role of the Sorcerer in the board game Candy Land. She said, “It was truly an honor to perform this role because I love acting and anything related to acting or musicals. I love doing that, and whatever character I’m going to be, I’m going to be super into it. So if I was like just the regular person, or the sorcerer, or just a random person on the side, I just go all out.” The senior skit, based on Clue, earned the most points from the judges, while the sophomores came in second. The last day of Spirit Week was the All-School Cheer Day. Each grade had to perform two cheers, and like the first day of the week, the middle schoolers surprised the high school with another win.
HOMECOMING: SENIORS CROWNED WINNERS
Spirit Week came to a close during halftime of the boys’ varsity basketball Homecoming game that evening, when the results of the competition were announced. While the seniors were jubilant, the juniors were disappointed by their third-place finish, as they had trailed the seniors for most of the week. Butay, who is a junior class officer, summed up what many of her classmates were feeling, saying, “Absolutely, it was really surprising. Maybe I’m just biased, but I feel that the juniors put in a lot of work into having everything such as the banner, the Pepper Squad, and the mascots come full circle. In the end we got third place, which was very surprising, because we thought that it was our best year yet.”
On the other hand, this year’s sophomores felt that they exceeded their own expectations. Blair LaBarre, a sophomore Pepper Squad performer, stated that, “I think the Spirit Week results were fair. I think each grade put in a lot of hard work that the judges didn’t see, and every grade deserved to win. In the end, it’s up to the judges and how they thought each grade performed throughout the week.”
Dynah Ustare, a junior class advisor, hopes that her class will keep a positive perspective. “You know we can’t control everything, and [the loss] reminded us of the reality that we can’t control everything in life. We can only try our best. Regardless of how people assessed it, if we did the best we could, we have every right to be proud,” she said. Lohr, as the head of the Student Council, hopes that everyone can celebrate their hard work, even if they did not win. “If I had one thing to say to the underclassmen,” he said, “all I can really think of is to just enjoy it. The results may not go in your favor, but you’ll always have another chance to make it up next year.”
