Spirit week is officially underway, and as always, it appears that all of the classes and teachers are going all out. The new after school spirit week activities that were put in place this year seem to have increased the excitement and have given the students and staff more of a drive to earn points.

The second after school event that took place on Thursday was the dizzy bat race. Ten participates from each class line up across the baseline of the basketball court. One at a time student sprint to the opposite end of the court, pick up then bat, spin five times, and then proceed to run back to the starting line. Once one person finishes, the next person in line goes.

The freshman class and teachers were not present for this event, so unfortunately, they did not earn any point.

This left the sophomores, juniors, and seniors to compete. The juniors, however, did not have ten participates so the rules were slightly changed for them. All of the juniors that were present went once, and the same rules that applied for everyone else applied for them. However, after everyone went, they had to send four more juniors and these people then had to spin 10 times.

The race was pretty close all the way through, but the sophomore class pulled out a surprising victory. Representing the sophomores was Hannah Hollow, Alyssa Richardson, Erica Warner, Cammi Balentine, Jon Holewinski, Kyle Sedler, Cannon Chelmo, Lucas Chory, Justice Delcastillo, and Brett Repke.

Sophomore, Brielle Powers, was also present at the event. When asked how she felt about the sophomore victory, she said, “I was pretty excited! I wasn’t involved much last year so it’s really interesting to see what we can do when we all participate.”

The juniors were frustrated at first, saying that Mr. Bart had them take too many spins the second time through, but their complaints were turned down.

In this competition overall, the sophomores came in first, the seniors in second, and the juniors came in third.

Mr. Bart, the man behind the idea of the after school events, commented on the dizzy bat race, “I think it went really well, and it was great to see the two classes that had ten people. The juniors had six which was good, but you just hope for more of a turnout, and ideally, what we wanted and what I had put down on the official rosters was there had to be five girls and five guys for every event. We wanted an equal amount of everybody to be involved instead of one group dominating the whole thing. I think it went well all things considered. For next year, we’ve identified some issues, and I think the word being out for next year will dramatically improve overall attendance.”