I jolted up from a nap that I didn’t even realize I was taking. I looked at my phone and saw that the time was 6:45 p.m and  I should’ve been at school 15 minutes ago. Wearing my pajamas and having smudged makeup, I have never seen myself get ready so fast in my life.

When I finally got into the gym with two minutes to spare, I see this wonderfully built castle and a mystical backdrop hanging from the ceiling. I went and sat down with my friends and then it seems like seconds later, the timer that was projected onto giant screens hit 00:00 and the lights shut off. Students from all classes started to scream and yell and we see the Voice of Whitney, Daniel Jones, come out from the castle to introduce the concept of this rally. The story was that there could only be one class who could accompany him to go back to Wonderland. The concept was fun and different from the normal “Where’s Wildcat? Let’s find him!” type of theme.

The games played looked like they were fun to play, but they were hard to watch. When your class is doing poorly in all the games, it’s not easy to look at. The freshman did the best and won the “Alice in Wonderland” trivia game, and also won the “get ready for Wonderland” relay race.

There was also a segment where singers, Josh Vu, Gabriel Lasmarias, Maximo Esguerra, Camille Baldovino, Zach Roberts, Casey Borghesi, Bailey Adkins and Megan Hallam went up to sing a mashup of the songs “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic and “Timber” by Kesha. This was the best part of the rally because it got everyone really excited and you could also sing along. The singers did an amazing job performing and an even better job keeping the crowd alive.

Student feedback on #wildcatinwonderland rally (with images, tweets) · whitneyupdate

Like always, the cheer and dance team dressed up in fun costumes for their performances. Both teams had the “Alice in Wonderland” theme cooperated in their routines. For this rally, I’ve never seen the dance team do better. Their routine was perfectly coordinated with the theme, the dancers stuck to the character, the outfits matched the theme amazingly, and the glowing tea cups they held throughout the dance just really put the cherry on top. As for the cheer team they had a couple drops in the stunts and some tumbling wasn’t completed; despite that, their energy stayed high and they pulled off a great routine.

The part of the rally that got people screaming the most was seeing the Sophomore boys perform their powder puff cheer routine. They weren’t as graceful or skilled as the actual cheer team, but the crowd didn’t mind. Seeing the boys twerk was definitely a crowd pleaser.

Seeing the Homecoming court get crowned was also another major highlight of this event. The nominees grabbed an envelope and the winners had a King or Queen card inside The loudest point of the rally was when junior royalty Kia Azar got crowned. Because Azar is in all AP classes and had tons of work piling up, he brought his homework to the rally and was working on it from the bleachers.

This rally was a major success. I’ve never seen such a beautiful setup and the crowd really kept the energy going.

by LILY JONES