Saturday, February 19, 2011
Photo
Canfield students, from left, (front) Trang Ong, Olivia Pacheco, Juanita Gonzales, Gabby Thomas; (back) Ariana Ellis, Allison Popovec, John Poullas, Sabrina Mangapora and Denice Fleshman dressed in red and black on Friday of Spirit Week.
Story and Photos
By EMILY GIANETTI
School spirit often suffers in February. Basketball season is almost over and it is a while until softball and track start up in the spring.
However, the Canfield student body found a way to combat the mid-year slump by participating in the annual Spirit Week from Feb. 7-11.
Spirit Week’s five days were filled with events and themes to keep spirit strong, and, since each event was scored, to promote a little friendly competition between grades. Seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen all tried to collect points throughout the week by having the greatest mass participation in all of the events.
Inevitably, the seniors won with 31 points. Sophomores were second with 23 points. The freshmen beat the juniors 22-20.
To get ready for Spirit Week, each grade selected a theme. Seniors went small-town with “Welcome to Cornfield,” while juniors kept it old school and decided on “Cowboys and Indians.” Sophomores had a military theme, “There’s Strong-Then There’s Cardinal Strong” and freshmen had “School ‘Em.”
Monday kicked off the week with signs plastered all over the cafeteria, sporting slogans for each grade. Tuesday was Color Day: seniors, blue, juniors, brown, sophomores, green, and freshmen, yellow.
Wednesday was where the real fun began: dressing up. Each grade had to dress up in a way that somehow related to their theme, turning the hallways into a mixture of nerds, soldiers, cowboys, and hicks.
“Cards Turn Up the Heat” followed for Thursday. Beach clothes and summer wear were the norm, and some wore winter garb to protest the “freezing” temperatures in the school.
Donated canned goods were also counted on Thursday.
On Friday, students wore typical red and black and attended the Spirit Week assembly, where each grade performed a skit and dance. Juniors won the skit contest, along with the Hoop Contest that was also scored on Friday.
“The skits and dances were the best part by far,” said sophomore Michelle Jones.
The skits may have been full of pop culture references to Versace and Chuck Norris jokes, but Spirit Week is not a new thing. Canfield has been doing it since the 1950s.
“Other people have stolen it from us,” said teacher Nancy Dove, who organizes many of the activities during Spirit Week.
But Canfield can take a breath. They are still the only school to dedicate an entire week to school spirit.
