For the first time in two years, the spirit, rally and dance commissions are working together to host a Spring Fling Spirit Week starting on March 28, one that is highlighted by a night rally, a dance and a new twist on the traditional football games played during the week.
Spring Fling Spirit Days
Monday and Tuesday, March 28 and 29, will be themed dress-up days hosted by spirit commission. Inflatables will also be brought on the upper field on Friday, senior co-head spirit commissioner Johnny Hulme said.
To determine the themes of the dress-up days, the commission will be posting polls on their Instagram account to survey student preference.
According to senior co-head commissioner Sadaf Sobhani, in past years, students would go to the upper field during lunch for a party consisting of obstacle courses, races and food trucks.
“However, this year, because our [budget was] cut short, we had to limit the activities we host,” Sobhani said. “In the past years, we could accumulate more money from our dances, so this year we had to cut some inflatables out.”
To advertise spirit activities to students, the commission plans on creating promotional social media videos and graphics and placing posters around campus.
Flag Football Games and a Night Rally
Along with spirit days, intramural flag football games will begin at lunch on Wednesday, March 30, and will continue until Friday.
After receiving a positive reception from implementing a gender-inclusive Homecoming court, the rally commission has replaced powderpuff, a traditionally girls-only football game, with flag football under the name of Falcon Puff to reemphasize gender inclusivity. The rally commission is also organizing a potential Lip Dub that may happen later in the school year and a night rally, which hasn’t been done in a decade.
Earlier this year, the commission surveyed students on their interest in attending a night rally through Instagram polls. Because of the positive student responses they received, the commissions will be hosting the first night rally that the school has held in ten years.
“Our rally that we recently had in February was not the best that we’ve ever had because we had some emergency setbacks,” senior head commissioner Rima Christie said. “So we started planning over [February] break, outlining our script and brainstorming promotional material to avoid dealing with those difficulties again.”
The night rally will be held indoors. While the maximum capacity is 1,000 people, commissioners are confident that students will practice the necessary social distancing measures. They plan to sell tickets at low prices to prevent outsiders from other schools from sneaking in, and food and drinks will also be sold on-site.
Because this event is completely new for the rally commission, Christie hopes to heavily advertise and ask teachers to promote the rally to their students as the date draws closer. The commission is also in talks to film a lip dub.
“Some things are still up in the air, but we’re really excited for all the events we have planned out for Spring Fling,” Christie said. “We’re working under a ‘go big or go home’ mentality, so our commission is definitely planning on making this week memorable for everyone.”
Spring Fling Dance
Spring Fling week will wrap up with a semi-formal dance, similar to the Homecoming dance. It will take place on Saturday, April 2 from 8-10 p.m. in the large gym.
The commission has settled on “Winnie the Pooh” as the theme and urges students to dress in colorful outfits like springtime dresses. Ticket sales begin the week of March 14 starting at $10 with ASB package and $15 without, with prices increasing by $5 every week.
The commission is in the process of finalizing logistics such as finding catering and DJs. Though the dance was originally to be held on the tennis courts, the lack of restrooms and the ongoing tennis season forced the dance into the gym.
“We would have had to spend thousands of dollars for the evening to rent bathrooms, and that would really have brought the ticket prices up which we didn’t prefer,” activities director Kristen Cunningham said. “The other thing is that we got approval from our COVID task force to have the dance indoors, so it’s exciting because it’s going to be the first indoor dance since 2020.”
With the recent lift of the indoor mask mandates, the dance commission is expecting the large gym capacity to be 400-500 students.
“This is going to be the last dance of the year for a lot of underclassmen and the first indoor dance,” head dance commissioner Avani Kongetira said. “We want to end the year with good memories for them.”