The Kick-Off to A Great Year

Click here to see images of the rally.

August 20th was the first Stadium Rally of the school year. Seeing all of our amazing Huskies gathered together in the same place once again was absolutely remarkable. Important people such as Ms. Porter, the activities director, the members of the United Student League (USL), the Link Crew, Multicultural Council, and Renaissance played an important role in leading the event, and reminding us of some of our favorite childhood cartoons.

We work with all the leadership groups, including the Class officers. And everyone takes a piece of it, about 7 groups were involved.” Says Ms. Porter, the Activities Director, regarding orchestrating the great back-to-school kick-off rally.

The activities chosen were “Musical Chairs”, “Cartoon Chaos” and “It’s a Catch”. There was also an activity for the teachers, guessing the name of a cartoon show from just its theme song.

Musical Chairs was the traditional game and Cartoon Chaos consisted of 1 person from each grade attempting to transport a water balloon from one bucket to another, blindfolded. The team who got the most balloons in their bucket won for their class. The game It’s a catch also consisted of teams from different grades. The game was 2 players and tested catching and throwing abilities. Each team would start close together, and then progressively space themselves apart after each successful catch. If a team dropped the ball, they would be eliminated.

At the end of the rally there was the traditional class chant and as always, the seniors blew away every other grade. It was barely even a contest.

During the rally, our talented cheerleading team performed twice, once to the song “Toxic” by Britney Spears and again to “Panoramic” by Dmac.

The North football team surprised the crowd with a dance from Māori culture called The Haka. The Haka is a type of ceremonial Māori dance that originated in New Zealand. This ritual gave the crowd a sense of the pride and strength of our wonderful- so far undefeated football team.

The Blue Star Regiment also performed multiple songs, including the Fight Song, to help motivate the crowd.

Although the majority of students had a blast, some had critiques for the rally. Some students wanted to focus on specific topics, like one cartoon such as Phineas and Ferb, rather than an overall broad theme. The DJ also only played remixes of the cartoon songs, and a select few students would have preferred the originals.

It also seemed very difficult for the crowd to get excited and hyper, and the rally would be more effective and entertaining if the leaders implemented more effective ways to get everyone in the crowd involved. One suggestion to fix this comes from senior Devon Harris-Hall, “I feel that getting the crowd in assemblies to be more involved is going to be difficult. I know many of the underclassmen have a hard time with school spirit, but if I were leading, I would implement a few new activities to get the crowd more involved. A lot of students are glued onto their phones, and I think using their phones for an event, such as a Kahoot, could effectively involve the crowd.”

Overall, John W. North High School’s first student rally of the year ended on a great note, hopefully, the start of an even greater year for our Huskies.