Pep Rallies Make a Comeback at TWHS

Pep rallies haven’t been a thing here at Thomas Worthington since the 2019-2020 school year. A natural casualty of COVID, the rallies are making a return this year thanks to the work of the Pep Rally Committee and chairs Chloe King and Angelina Milanov.

“We thought we will bring back pep rallies just to give every student some cheer and some excitement about the upcoming events,” said sophomore Chloe King.

Planning a pep rally for the whole school is definitely a task for the TWHS Student Council advisor, Will Thornton.

“For the pep rallies, I go to the committee meetings, you know, work with the kids when they’re coming up with ideas. If we need to order stuff, I can order stuff,” Thornton said.

For seniors, pep rallies haven’t happened since freshman year. For freshmen to juniors, the fall pep rally was the first time they have participated in any such event. Underclassmen hadn’t known the excitement that seniors experienced when they heard pep rallies were making a comeback.

“I was kind of excited because… I guess in the past couple of years, coming up with COVID and stuff, school spirit has kind of suffered and there’s been a lack of student engagement,” Senior Eyiram Nutor said. “So I feel like I felt like pep rallies could help usher that back in.”

Underclassmen get a whole other experience as they get to experience a pep rally for the first time. For many, it would be their first traditional high school experience.

“I was very excited because it gave me a sense of an actual high school experience, like a normal high school thing to do,” junior Madeline Ahenkora said. “Because my freshman year was halfway done till I actually got like here full-day, and then sophomore year was kind of normal. But I feel like as a junior, now I get the actual experience I deserve.”

Committee chairs Chloe King and Angelina Milanov get to choose different students to participate for the challenges and events they have planned.

“I think that the students look forward to it more because then we like to get them involved. And we like to pick students from the crowd,” said King. “So we’d like to get them up and out of their seats.”

Despite this enthusiasm, it’s hard to get everyone to participate in the pep rallies, even by picking students from the crowd and having them cheer and participate in activities.

“There were parts that students were engaged in for sure and that kids have told me that they really enjoyed and thought they were funny but there were also parts that they’re like ‘oh that’s so lame’ or, when we were trying to get each class to see who could cheer the loudest…no one was loud,” said junior class vice president and pep rally committee chair, Angelina Milanov.

Having no pep rallies for 3 years, Pep rallies now happen 3 times a school year, specifically to introduce the athletes in season and bring attention to each sport and very important games.

“Our pep rallies usually have a purpose of recognizing kids who are in season,” Thomas Worthington principal Pete Scully said. “They’re typically aligned with the three sports seasons: fall, winter, and spring. I think they’re looking for opportunities to highlight important or exciting games.”

With teachers having the chance to participate during pep rallies, it gets them involved with school spirit. Many students and teachers get the chance to bond as well over challenges and get a good laugh out of remembering the events.

“We all had pep rallies when we were in high school,” Kim Brienza said. “So it’s just like this thing that we’re excited to see students get to experience as well,”