Most know the games and the cheering, but only a few select students understand the work that goes into the celebration of panther pride

Every high school student knows the spirited scene of a pep rally; full of games, performances, and the notorious rollercoaster. However, behind the scenes of this break from the school day is the hard work of the Student Council Association and Panther Leadership Council.

Plenty of prep goes into the 45 minutes event. From the moment the freshmen step foot into the gymnasium until the last students walk out, it’s all a meticulously planned.

The day of, PLC and pep rally committee members come in early to set up props and any other materials needed. The entire pep rally is then running off a script that outlines everything down to the second.

“There are different jobs, like last pep rally I had to oversee the sophomore class and I just had to explain the games and stuff,” said pep rally committee and PLC member, junior Natalie Campos.

Each member takes on a different role every pep rally.

Cooperation is key and so is timing. Games are prepared beforehand and are sometimes thematic, if possible. “You can’t really repeat games because then it’s like boring, so we try to come up with a bunch of different games that are fun,” said Campos.

Performances are determined on a first come, first serve basis and the head pep rally coordinator, senior Bruce Sheppard, places them into the schedule. “We’re really flexible with the order of things and I try to alternate the order each pep rally, so there’s not too much of one thing at any time. There’s a traditional pep rally order that we have at this point,” said Sheppard.

Not only does Sheppard prepare every aspect of the pep rally, he is the emcee, along with senior Justin Henessey.  “As we have gotten farther into it, we kind of just do our thing. For example, the intro we had where we ran in with the cart [on April 13], it was like a few minutes before [the pep rally started] and Justin was like, ‘hey there’s a cart; let’s put a chair on it and I’ll roll you in,’” said Sheppard.

This event has become more student-based throughout the year. As Sheppard got more comfortable, he took on planning and controlling the pep rally from development and set up to take down. “I am technically the visionary, so I know better than everyone else what I want to happen. It’s a lot of stress on me,” said Sheppard.

PLC and SCA have tried to change things up this year to make the event both new and exciting. They put on the second outdoor pep rally in September, which was introduced last fall. Items like t-shirts are tossed to the crowd, usually to the winning class, as an incentive and motivation.

“This year we got Luca [Farouz] involved in the roller coaster and stuff, usually it’s the emcees, but everyone likes Luca so we tried to incorporate that,” said Campos.