By Eliana Klein

Every year during the homecoming pep rally, the bleachers become filled with Mt. Hebron students dressed head to toe in red, blue, gold, and black to cheer on their class. The pep rally consisted of tremendous performances by the marching band, cheerleading team, lancers, and color guard, followed by the homecoming court. Games were played as well, with each class having several volunteers participating in various activities in an attempt to rack in some final points towards their class rankings. 

Since this year had been the first pep rally since 2019, the energy from the students was extraordinarily high, and much time was spent between events trying to control the crowd. 

Sophomore at Mt. Hebron and homecoming court representative Claire Fitzsimmons got to experience the pep rally from the turf and shared her feelings about the organization of the pep rally. 

“I feel like it was a little less organized just because they had everyone rushing around and all of the games were getting interrupted,” Fitzsimmons said when asked how the pep rally matched up to previous years. “It was still fun, though.” 

One event that had the crowd going wild was the tug of war. The tug of war competition between the grades always gets the most cheers and shouts because each class and teachers send volunteers to compete.  The shocking turn of events this year was the close match between the seniors and juniors. 

The underclassmen were disqualified soon after the competition for using competitors from other classes- leading the seniors to win by default. The students in the bleachers went wild when the teachers ended the senior’s tug of war win streak with ease. These results were unexpected considering the usual association that upperclassmen have with strength in these types of competitions. 

One participant in the tug of war event shared their take on why the seniors performed under their usual expectations. Namrata Vannemreddy, senior and tug of war volunteer, said she regretted signing up for the competition in the first place.

“Yeah, I mean, it was really fun and all, and it was my last year for this kind of stuff, but instead of having open sign-ups for the games, we should have picked people that would have won it for us,” Vannemreddy stated.

Many seniors felt the same as Vannemreddy. Although they would have had fun, either way, they felt that a huge senior blowout during the rally would have been one way to start this new school year out with a bang. 

Something that did not change from the perspective of the crowd was the marching band’s performance. The precautions taken for COVID-19 meant changes for band practices resulting in a lot of overwhelmed musicians, senior Tal Pluznik explained.

“I just think everyone was really nervous, but we did really well considering how last minute a lot of it was,” said Pluznik. “Either way, Mr. Fischer was proud of our performance, and so was I. My bandmates are like family, so I had a lot of fun.” 

Overall, everyone who worked to make the celebration possible put smiles on the student’s faces. It was indeed a phenomenal way to boost school spirit and normalize school events once again.

Photo taken by Madeleine Phillips