Welcome to Spirit Night!

For those of you who missed it, Pentucket hosted its annual Spirit Night for the 2024 school year in the past week. Spirit Night is a beloved tradition for Pentucket students that creates friendly competition and excitement.

Each year, it takes place the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, which is right in the middle of Spirit Week. Students arrive representing their grade in their assigned colors as a fun way to earn points.

Previously, the night has been a fun way to get the majority of the student body involved and have fun with their peers. Each grade comes together in hopes of taking home the overall win among the seven games played. Upperclassmen and alumni can all testify that Spirit Night is one of the most joyous parts of high school, yet some students left feeling upset by the results.

Before

Heading into the night, the juniors and seniors were both prepared to go for the win. The two grades had been battling it out all throughout Spirit Week, hoping that the current standings would change after the night.

As seniors went into the night, they felt confident in their ability to win, after their not so surprising victory for color day. It was clear they weren’t feeling discouraged from their previous losses over the days prior, and were only excited to show the underclassmen what was in store.

The juniors had the same high morale entering Spirit Night. They had won every dress-up day before and also had the highest percentage of attendance at the Homecoming dance the Friday prior. Feeling strong in their capabilities after winning Spirit Night last year and placing second the year prior, the juniors had almost zero doubts going into the gym last Tuesday night.

For the sophomores, although the dress-up days have not earned them many points, their grade was just as excited and eager to show their school spirit and win some points against the upperclassmen.

Finally the freshmen, showing they can do it as well as the upperclassmen, have been doing quite well in dress-up points. Never having been at Spirit Night, they were still ready to show up and try their best.

Before the games that night, a reminder of behavior expectation was said. It was a reiteration of a brief email that was sent to students acknowledging the fact that there would be possible deductions and disqualifications for booing, questioning referee calls, or other examples of poor sportsmanship. 

The night started out exciting as everyone had predicted; spirits were still high and everyone was eager to watch the first game take place. 

Nitroball

Nitroball was up first with the juniors competing against the freshmen, and the seniors against the sophomores. As predicted the juniors were easily able to take down the freshmen, whereas the seniors struggled in their win against the sophomores.

Moving onto the next two games, the juniors faced off against the seniors, while the sophomores and freshmen battled it out for third place. 

Unfortunately for the sophomores, they weren’t able to pull out a win, leaving them starting in last place with one point, following the freshmen with two points.

As the juniors and seniors began their game, all the students in the stands didn’t back down with the cheering. They kept getting louder and louder as the match progressed. Off to a good start, the seniors took the first few points, keeping the juniors in check. However, the juniors weren’t going to let this stand. They began to play better and eventually surpassed them in points and took the first win.

Score: 

Seniors 3

Juniors 4

Sophomores 1

Freshmen 2

Hula Hoop Chain 

A new game this year was the hula hoop chain. It replaced musical chairs, which was a fan favorite; however, there were too many issues with it in the past to continue. The hula hoop chain is when 30 students link arms and are tasked with getting a hula hoop through all of them and back. The first grade to do this wins.

Off to a good start, the juniors found a tactic that would help them to take the lead and get the hula hoop down fast. Yet when the seniors saw this they began using the same technique, but at an even quicker rate. With a close race, the seniors were able to beat the juniors by a few seconds. 

On the other hand, both the sophomores and freshmen were struggling to get the hula hoops through their bodies quickly. The two teams were so close it was hard to tell who would get the win, but the sophomores were able to take third this time.

Score: 

Seniors 7

Juniors 7

Sophomores 3

Freshmen 3

Badminton 

Once again, the seniors faced the sophomores and the juniors were against the freshmen, but this time in badminton.

Off to a bad start, the juniors lost their first person almost immediately. There wasn’t much hope for the freshmen as the table quickly flipped and juniors took the win. 

The seniors beat the sophomores in badminton, so next up, once more, was seniors versus juniors, and sophomores versus freshmen. 

Like in the previous games, the excitement for the juniors and seniors never ceased to dwindle and both grades cheered loudly to support their players. The games were looking close when many juniors began to get out. All the juniors had to do to get the victory was get one more person out, and they did not disappoint; leading the juniors to victory as the seniors took another second place.

Sadly, for the freshmen and sophomores, their games were not as focused on that night as the junior and senior class rivalry seemed to take over; however, they still fought strong for their grades ending this game with the sophomores winning third place again.

Score:

Seniors 10

Juniors 11

Sophomores 5

Freshmen 4

Limbo

A classic game with no teams, each student works individually hoping to be the last one to make it under the bar. Who would have thought a game of limbo could be so intense?

The bar started unexpectedly low, getting out most of each grade fairly quickly. However, the seniors noticeably had the least amount of players going into the second round. Juniors and sophomores looked to have a good group of students ready for round two. 

As the bar was lowered, nerves began to rise for all the students since they were still in shock they made it past the first round. Unfortunately, over rounds two and three, the seniors had no one left in the competition, taking their first loss.

After the end of round three it was down to the final few people. With one junior and two sophomores the bar was lowered and the students looked nervous, but with the crowds cheering the game proceeded.

The final junior left all of his grade proud as he made it under the bar. One sophomore was able to make it under as well, but unfortunately the other sophomore was unable to do the same and hit the bar.

In this case, going into the fourth round the final junior was told he did not make it under the correct qualifications because a part of his body hit the bar.  However, after the sophomore gave it her attempt, she was able to get the first win.

After this game, tensions began to rise with the students questioning whether the calls made were fair enough. 

Although bothered by this, the juniors were still favored to win at this point, and grateful to have come in second place still earning 3 points.

Score: 

Seniors 11

Juniors 14

Sophomores 9

Freshmen 6

Knockout

Up next was a fun and competitive game of basketball to entertain the crowd and earn some more points. Each grade was feeling confident knowing most of their representation came from some of their finest basketball players.

The game had a slow start, with a few of the underclassmen getting knocked out first, then as the game progressed, juniors and seniors began to fade too.

The freshmen took the loss for this one, getting edged out by the older kids. Sadly, for the juniors, they were next to be out as one sophomore and one senior remained.

Although it was a close game, the sophomores claimed their second win, which bumped them up on the leaderboard. 

Score: 

Seniors 14
Juniors 16

Sophomores 13

Freshmen 7

Dodgeball

To begin the chaos, the juniors and seniors would face off while the freshmen and sophomores would play each other.

However, the juniors stepped up and had quickly corrected this mistake, so they would play the freshmen, while just as before, the seniors would play the sophomores.

Like all of the games before, the upperclassmen took victory over the younger grades, leading to yet another intense battle of juniors versus seniors. 

The crowd was outraged on both sides, with juniors unbelievably mad and saying that the seniors could get away with cheating so easily, and seniors getting defensive and saying that they did nothing wrong and it was the juniors who didn’t play by the rules. 

Both grades were given two point deductions following this.

It was made clear by Mrs. Millard that the juniors lost two points “for chanting inappropriate things during the evening.” However, the reason for the seniors deduction remains unknown.

After the disagreement about the winner from both sides, it was decided that seniors beat the juniors in the end.

Going into the final game, the juniors were upset to say the least and felt it unfair that they were not only penalized for trying to advocate for their team, but still came in second to the seniors.

Score: 

Seniors 16

Juniors 17

Sophomores 15

Freshmen 8

Tug of War

The fear the juniors felt going into the final round was definitely present, but they kept their morale high and continued to cheer. 

The seniors were confident in their ability to win and knew this was all they needed to secure it all.

Whether it was an accident or not, instead of the usual freshman versus seniors, the freshmen fought against the sophomores, and the junior and seniors were pitted against each other once more.

The sophomores easily took the victory against the freshmen, securing their first or second place spot in the standing. However, the juniors did not see the same success and lost to the seniors.

Still hoping to win overall, the juniors cheered on the sophomores as they faced the seniors. Coming together, the sophomores and juniors cheered loudly for the same cause, leaving sophomores winning tug of war.

Unfortunately, this exciting victory got turned around quickly when the juniors were given another additional two point deduction for running onto the court to celebrate with the sophomores. 

Additionally, the sophomores were also penalized for the juniors’ behavior. At the end of the night, they lost two points. This was later learned to be because they stormed the court while exhibiting bad sportsmanship, according to Mrs. Millard.

On the other hand, sophomore Isabella Martins, suggested that “Students in the front row stepped off the bleachers due to the pushing and jumping after winning tug of war. I would not consider it ‘bad sportsmanship.’”

Proceeding the chaos, the juniors faced off against the freshman and were easily able to get their third place spot.

Leaving the final scores:

Seniors 19

Juniors 17

Sophomores 18 

Freshmen 8

The End of the Night

The students were upset by the scores given and believed the deductions were uncalled for and only took away from the fun of Spirit Night.

The changes to the night as well as the loss of points completely altered the score from what it would have been.

Without deductions:

Seniors 21

Juniors 21

Sophomores  19

Freshmen 9

However, this was not the main reason underclassmen left the school upset that night. It was due to the biased favoritism of the seniors.

The junior class felt they were being pitted against the seniors in almost every game, and still have yet to be given a clear reason behind their penalty points.

However, the sophomores felt they were treated the most unfairly. One of their class advisors said, “they lost two points for stepping off of the bleachers.” It was this two point deduction that took the win from sophomores. 

When calculating the scores, rather than taking points away from the sophomores during tug of war, they waited until the end of the night. Whether it was a coincidence or not, seniors ended up beating the sophomores by one point.

In an interview with Mrs. Millard, she said, “The calculations were checked by both students and staff.” However, many students felt they were inaccurate based on their own calculations.

Spirit Night is annually held as a tradition at Pentucket High School to be a friendly and fun event for students. However, many students are upset with the lack of communication with point calculation and deductions.