I vividly remember my first pep rally. I was in a crowd of people wearing white shirts, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, stiffer than statues. I remember screaming and cheering at the top of my lungs, as I am a very excitable person, and the people I was surrounded by looked so annoyed. I thought to myself Why would you not want to be loud and hyped at  a pep rally? It’s a pep rally. 

After I got over my self-consciousness, I just continued to cheer with disregard to the negative energy around me. I just thought, Hey, we’re freshmen, next year will be better.

Fast forward to sophomore year. Yeah, things got better. But not much. It was basically the “same old, same old.” I was disappointed. It was difficult to have fun at a pep rally when you’re worried that you’re being bothersome to those around you. So I could only have so much fun and be so loud, since I was the odd one out in the huge crowd of people who seemed as though they did not want to even be there.

I lost all hope that “being freshmen” had to do with the lack of spirit.

However, my junior year could not have been more different from my past two years of high school. The homecoming week pep rally was one of my best high school experiences so far. For a reason that I’m not entirely aware of I just had to win the spirit stick. I was tired of the other grades, including the sophomores below me, calling my class of 2016 “lame.”

Unfortunately, the first pep rally of this year, the sophomores were louder than the juniors. I could not believe it. When I was a sophomore, my class was not like these current sophomores. So I was determined to make sure that the sophomores did not win the stick, but rather, the juniors did.

And something was different about the homecoming pep rally. Everyone seemed to have finally discovered that it is more fun to actually go all out for pep rallies and cheer as loud as you can and to just care. I’m not completely sure how, but it actually came down to the sophomores and juniors. I had expected a one on one battle with the seniors, however it did not happen that way. When it came down to my class and the sophomores, I absolutely had to win. I screamed so loud I thought my throat was bleeding and I could not hear a thing.

According to some of my sophomore friends, it turns out we were loud. And I mean really loud. And it seems that has to be true if we beat the seniors.

When we were thrown the spirit stick I could not express my happiness. It’s so stupid that this means so much to me, but I don’t care. It took three years, and moments of me doubting my class would ever win, but it finally happened. We won the stick.