By Sydney Stumpf and Ailin Toro
The week before Thanksgiving, Spirit Week and pep rally took over Malden High School, engulfing the students in daily dress-up themes, beginning with pajama day, leading into wacky tacky day and closing on the day of the pep rally with Blue and Gold day where students are encouraged to dress in blue and gold to show Malden pride.
Rebecca Corcoran, the Class of 2019 advisor, stated, “It has been great to watch the freshman class get excited about their first spirit week. The class of 2019 is already coming together and showing how proud they are to be Malden High students.” Freshman placed fourth during pep rally, behind sophomores, juniors, and seniors in first place but all classes showed great school spirit as there was a sea of blue and gold in the bleachers of the Finn gym.
Each class created a banner to show school pride and to encourage the football team before their annual Thanksgiving game against Medford. Themes ranged from television shows to celebrities in which Malden is always shown to be the victor.
The pep rally began with all four classes chanting “Go Malden, beat Medford,” beginning with freshman yelling “Go,” ending with the Seniors yelling “Medford.” Even though all classes showed their enthusiasm and MHS pride, it was a bittersweet event for MHS principal, Dana Brown as it was his last Spirit Week and pep rally before retiring at the end of this school year. On his last spirit day, Brown expressed that “[he] love[s] the idea of coming together as a school in fun competitions.” He particularly likes wacky tacky day and is unsure what he will do next year at this time.
Pep Rally continued with basketball between the classes, followed by cheer routines from MHS’s cheerleading team. The senior football players and cheerleaders were then honored. The dance team, The Lions, performed in a lively dance routine, with the step team and break dancing group, Airbound, to follow later on. The pull up competition was next and concluded with the seniors reigning victorious.
The next performance during pep rally was memorable. All eyes were on the Step Team as their performance was full of coordinated dancers. The human pyramid event came shortly after then the over and under competeition. Sophomores claimed victory for that competition. The popular and exceptional MHS dance team, Airbound, concluded Spirit Week and pep rally, leaving the crowd in amazement.
“Spirit Week is about tradition, school spirit, and seeing the best of people that whole week” expressed Brown. These characteristics were surely apparent during Spirit Week and continue to be demonstrated each day.
An earlier version of this article was published on December 2 with photographer Meghan Yip’s name misspelled.
