Decorations throughout the gym helped tell the story of the robbery theme at the winter club’s rally on Jan. 27. Photo by SHAI NIELSON

At this year’s winter rally, the senior class may have won, but the main focus of the 40-minute event was on the school’s clubs.

“This is our third year basing this rally on clubs. It is always fun to see different students in the spotlight and gives those clubs a chance to shine,” activities director Mr. Jason Feuerbach said.

Most of the time the theme of a rally has to do with an event or dance going on at school, like Welcome Back or Homecoming, but the club’s rally was about a group of students who robbed the Whitney bank and were holding four hostages, one student from each grade level.

Even a unique theme doesn’t always translate into a good rally to some, though.

“I thought it wasn’t very good because the sound kept going out and so did the projector. Plus all the rallies are rigged so the seniors win,” Jared Roskelley said.

One challenge for ASB was having more to coordinate than usual because so many groups got to participate.

“This year there (were) 17 clubs/sports involved. That is a lot of students that are not normally involved in the rallies. We practice several times during lunch and the clubs practice the various skits on their own,” Feuerbach said.

The different skits involved the Drama Club who tried to formulate a plan to save the hostages, Science Olympiads who helped by delivering a pizza to the robbers, Alpha F who revived the junior class hostage and various other clubs who participated in different ways to stop the robbers.

“I wrote the scene for the Drama Club and we didn’t have a lot of time to go over it, but I think we did really well, and the rally seemed to go well, too. It was my third time being in this rally and I felt this was one of the better ones,” Sidney Raey-Gonzales said.

Not only were clubs involved, but also the winter sports teams (girls’ and boys’ basketball and wrestling) all participated and the hip hop competition dance team performed a routine in camo outfits to go with the theme.

As always, each class has a section theme that corresponds with the whole rally. This year the seniors were SWAT with an acrostic poster using the letters from SWAT to spell “Seniors Will Always Triumph.” Juniors were firemen basing their poster on a popular Adele song that said “Set Fire To the Reign,” while sophomores were lifeguards with students dressed in lifeguard attire. The freshmen were EMTs with posters depicting a heartbeat and saving lives.

“The leadership class makes presentations on possible themes. These presentations are then debated by the leadership class. After the debate they vote online that night to select the theme. After the theme is decided the seniors choose their section theme from a list of approximately 10 ideas, then the juniors and so on. The section theme always ties in to the storyline,” Feuerbach said.

Throughout the rally, the classes cheered on their friends in each activity, but it seemed the firemen weren’t as spirited.

“Three-fourths of the junior section weren’t as pumped as usual for the rally. It was a disappointment that we didn’t yell as much. Yeah we’re juniors, but at least scream to your heart’s content for fun (if) not for competition,” Sam Casas said.

The lack of spirit in the junior section even had some students angry about other classes being more interested in the rally.

“The sophomores usually have the least spirit and today they kicked our (butt). Our class did worse than they have done in the three years since we have been freshman. It’s a shame to go into a rally and see a class perform so poorly,”  Matt McConnell said.

Behind all the students in the crowd and the clubs performing various skits was the force behind the whole rally: the ASB leadership class.

After the rally Raey-Gonzales said, “The ASB kids are just really on it. They were really cool cheering (the clubs) on and saying good luck. You can tell it means a lot to them that the rallies go well. It’s like their thing, their show for the school.”

By SHAI NIELSON