The time has finally come for high school students all around the world, for the annual homecoming season! There are multiple events planned throughout the week to celebrate for students, like differently themed football games, the dance itself, spirit days, and a pep rally. This article is going to dive deeper into the pep rally aspect of this week.
Pep rallies are events held at high schools that gather students together to boost their enthusiasm about a certain event— in this case the event is homecoming. Pep rallies can be held in middle school and high school, grade doesn’t define your school spirit!
The pep rallies that take place at Seminole High School (SHS) are held in the competition gym, and the stands are divided into four different sections. The sections are divided by grade, into freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It is also divided into two pep rallies as SHS holds about 4,000 students divided between the two campuses. Throughout the crowd of students, school spirit is shown by wearing orange and black attire for the school colors due to the theme of the day, final act friday.
Before the pep rally, students from both our ninth grade center and main campus can be seen flooding into the gym filled with excitement for the activities to come. Fatema Hossain, a SHS sophomore, had this to say: “I have always thought pep rallies were a lot of fun. It’s cool to see everyone so excited for stuff at school. I had the second pep rally, and it was still a lot of fun and there was a lot of energy in the crowd.”
Our school is home to a large number of extracurricular activities such as our football team, cheer team, and band crew. They can also be seen before the pep rally practicing their routines and bringing extra spirit to the gym. There is also our dazzlers, our school’s dance team that can be seen performing at halftime during football games and many other events.
Another key component to our school is our band, and their music can be heard all throughout the pep rally and even before as they walk the hallways practicing for their performance. Ayden Mcdonald, a SHS sophomore and a member of the Pride of the Tribe, had this to say about pep rallies: “I think pep rallies are a lot of fun. I love seeing people hype up the band in the stands and to be able to perform in the band at all of these different events is really cool. I like how they are divided too, so it isn’t so packed and everyone can enjoy it.”
Band and Dazzlers sometimes work hand and hand, as seen in the pep rally as the team was dancing to the band’s instruments. JV Dazzlers perform first, and they have found a cool way to incorporate school spirit into their dance. In the middle of the dance, the music cuts out and students have to keep the energy up and cheer for them in place of the music. Varsity is then the next to perform, and they also get a good amount of cheers from students.
There are also our cheer teams, Freshman, JV, and Varsity, that are seen on the sidelines. JV and Varsity have a performance about halfway through the event, whereas freshmen stay on the sidelines to cheer on the crowd.
While we are on the topic of the components of a good homecoming pep rally, the homecoming court plays a big role in it. Homecoming court finds a good way to incorporate students in the decision making, because students choose who wins. During the middle of the pep rally, the nominees for homecoming court participated in a game of musical chairs. There were many engaging things for students to have fun with, and now that homecoming week has come to an end, we hope everybody had a wonderful week!