After five days of exciting events and heated competition, the class of ’24 won Spirit Week 2023 for the second time in their high school career. Although the juniors held a lead over the seniors for most of the week, the seniors finished the week with 125 more points than the juniors, leading them to a surprising Spirit Week victory announced at the annual Spirit Week Dance.
According to President Alicia Leung ’24, the senior class is feeling good after their win: “I think everyone, and myself included, we’re all really, really hype … I think this was one of our best years yet, and we always pull it together. I think our class has definitely bonded as a whole and I’m really proud of every single person’s really hard work in pulling it together.”
Regarding the grade’s energy as they partook in the many events of Spirit Week 2023, Leung noted, “We might have had our ups and downs with our planning, but in the end, everyone pulled it together … we kept a positive attitude even when we didn’t get first in every event, which I’m really proud of the grade for.”
Bella Didie ’24, a key Hallway contributor, added to Leung’s sentiments about the grade’s collaboration, explaining how every senior pitched in to help: “I think especially in Hallway, we all hunkered down, and the entire grade worked together … people I’ve never seen working in Hallway were painting things, putting stuff up … I think the sense of community was really good.”
One of the crucial events that contributed to the seniors’ win was Tug, in which they earned 87.5 points from their overall effort in the Tug competition. The seniors won the Team A contest by defeating the ninth graders in their first round and overtaking the juniors in their final round. The key to the seniors’ success was their teamwork and unity: “We listened to each other, worked together, and stuck to our strategy of ‘1-2-Pull’ which we have done in the past years,” said team member Jewell Jacobs ’24. With the juniors defeating the sophomores and the sophomores defeating the freshmen, the rest of group A finished with the juniors in 2nd, sophomores in 3rd, and freshmen in 4th.
Despite the seniors’ win in Tug earlier in the week, the class of ’24 didn’t have many other early wins, which Didie noted was a major difference from last year: “We got a really good early lead last year, and that’s what caused us to win because we didn’t win Airband last year, but we did win Hallway … This Spirit Week was kind of the opposite, where we didn’t really win anything at the beginning, but we did win the two big things at the end.”
Leung commented on one similarity between the two years that the seniors have won Spirit Week, citing the “sheer determination and hard work that everybody puts in” as one of the reasons for their victory. She also commented on how the grade was determined to win again after doing so last year: “I think once people realize that, ‘oh, we can do it,’ we can do it … when we put our minds to it there’s no beating the Class of ’24.”
