As many students may already know, next week, THS celebrates its annual fall pep rally spirit week. With the pep rally on Friday and spirit dress-up themes running all week, there’s been a lot of excitement bustling through the halls. But what should students really expect to see?
Regarding this year’s spirit dress-up days, the S.O. has come up with some fun themes for students to follow. After our day off for the Yom Kippur holiday on Monday the 25th, these themes will run throughout the rest of the week. School days will certainly be filled with more excitement than usual, and many students are already planning their outfit ideas for each day.
Along with these spirit days, Friday’s pep rally also aims to radiate more unity in students, who should expect various segments from our sports teams, cheer team and the marching band/color guard. Enthusiasm from each team always seems to get everybody in the gym excited for the year, and new students who may not be familiar with certain teams in THS have the opportunity to get a better idea of what our school is all about.
Jocelyn Kim (’25), a cheerleader at THS, explained how much she loves cheering for Tenafly during the pep rally. “There are people in the crowd that are genuinely passionate about our school…who come to every game to cheer their teams on,” she said. “We have a choreographed dance planned especially for pep rally and we will perform our halftime routine as well.”
For many teams like the cheerleaders, the pep rally is a very special day as it’s their chance to show the whole school who they are. Not every student in THS goes to all the sporting events outside of school time, so the pep rally gives an opportunity for all the teams to have the full attention and support of the entire student body.
This year, THS is celebrating its 100-year anniversary with a special glow-in-the-dark pep rally theme. The S.O. has been working tirelessly to live up to the expectations of this pep rally and spirit week, as nothing like this has ever been done before. They hope to bring in even more spirit than previous years, and many have faith that it will succeed.
Grace Chung (‘24), senior class president as well as one of this year’s pep rally hosts, is thrilled for this year’s pep rally. “I can’t express enough how excited I am to be a host of our first glow pep rally this year,” she said. “It’s my senior year, and I’ve always wanted our school to do something as cool as this and I’m so grateful that I get to be a part of this experience!” Many students at THS share this emotion and are hopeful for an extra special kick-off to the year.
However, although the Tenafly spirit does exist in many students, some students feel that our spirit could be even brighter. Anoushka Chakrabarti, a junior at THS, expressed this feeling. “Our school does a great job promoting spirit week, but some students don’t have the best attitude about it,” she said. “Specifically for the spirit dress-up days, a lot of students are embarrassed about how they’re perceived, so they feel uncomfortable about dressing up for the themes and just being spirited in general.” Students involved in class office and the S.O. feel that much of Tenafly’s school spirit was lost after COVID, and they hope to bring back this previous sense of dedication to our school. Though it may be difficult to have complete participation in school spirit, just a bit more positivity in each person could unify each class significantly and make our school environment an overall more fun place to be.
With just a little more enthusiasm from each class, our spirit week and year as a whole has the potential to be something we’ve never seen before. There’s only one high school experience, and it’s important that students take advantage of these four years and take pride in being a student in Tenafly.
