At Mt. Vernon, school spirit is crucial when it comes to sporting events, but it is especially important for students when it comes to homecoming weeks. The spirit week for winter homecoming, though, seemed to be a little underwhelming this year.

Homecoming week for football this past school year was a big hit, with students dressing to the nines when the spirit day of the week was Vine and Meme day, or School Spirit Day the Friday before the big game.  

However, this year’s winter homecoming, although it had an interesting spirit week, did not seem to strike a chord with students. The most popular days seemed to be Monochrome Day, where students dressed in only one color, as well as Character Day. It appeared though that, even on the most popular spirit days, only around half of the student body participated.

“I did not participate at all in spirit week because I really am not the most school spirited person, and it just did not seem worth the effort,” Brenna Lechner, 12.

Some students still took this week very seriously, though.

“I participated because I am very involved in school athletics, and I wanted to show I was rooting for the Lady Marauders to pull out a win,” Josh Gondeck, 12.

The pep rally was a bit different this year as well. The energy did not seem as high as past pep rallies, but there was still a sense of liveliness in the crowd of students. Of course there were the normal senior spotlights where all winter athletes, and band and choir students were recognized in front of the entire school. There was only one activity played this year during the rally, a giant version of tic-tac-toe, and surprisingly, the freshman pulled out the win.

However, one general tradition that has happened at least for the past several pep rallies is the cheerleaders leading the “I believe” chant at the end. This always finishes with the whole school chanting “I believe that we will win,” enthusiastically, and a large portion of the crowd will run onto the basketball court, continuing the chant. This time, though, there were maybe only a few dozen of students that ran down.

So this homecoming week was upside down all around.