As juniors, this year’s senior students pulled off something that had never been done before. In the traditional homecoming skit competition, they beat the Class of 2014 with a choreographed performance mimicking a music video. Senior Cameron Morrison recalls thinking up the idea with fellow seniors Alex Jones and William Crouch during their junior year. They decided they wanted to do something different from previous years. Crouch liked the music video of Bruno Mars’s song, “Treasure,” and the boys knew that was the perfect song for them to lip sync and dance along to.
After involving their spirited classmates, the boys decided to keep the skit a secret to avoid the other classes stealing their ideas.
“I was supposed to be Bruno Mars in my Uncle Sam costume,” Morrison said. “It was scary, but we did really well. We won the spirit stick last year, and we beat the seniors when we were juniors, which had never been done before. I guess that just kind of proved that we had more spirit than all the other grades.”
The seniors worked hard before and after school with dance teacher Resi Dolbee to pull off their winning performance. The students involved focused mainly on enjoying the experience and entertaining the rest of the student body. The homecoming skit allowed the class to come together and work to beat the rest of the classes.
“It was really fun actually putting all the work into it and actually seeing the results,” senior Zack Crane said. “So that’s why, this year, being on Student Government Association, we realized that if we put out all the work that we could, then we would make senior year as good as we possibly could.”
This year SGA made it their goal to increase school spirit. In previous years, the student section at sporting events and performances had been relatively small. With the help of SGA and the Student Section Revolution they planned in September, the student section grew.
“I feel like the pep rallies that we had, especially the ones with the competitions, really brought the senior class together, as well as the juniors and the sophomores and the freshman,” Crane said. “Everybody looked at all their peers and knew they had competed with these people in order to beat the rest of them. It made the classes bond.”
The seniors built upon the groundwork laid two years ago by West graduate Collin Armstrong, who created the Dirty Birds. The success of the sports teams during the year also made a difference in school spirit.
“The seniors were really motivated to change the spirit of the school,” Suzanne Perron, SGA sponsor, said. “They decided to do not just the Dirty Birds for basketball games, but they wanted to show that same kind of spirit for football games, and of course, it really helped that we had an awesome football team.”
Class leaders attributed the seniors’ success to the group’s diversity.
“It seemed like last year’s seniors had a really exclusive group and kept things within that group,” Crane said. “We’re trying to get as many people as possible involved. A lot of different people have a lot of different perspectives. The way I view something might not necessarily be the same way other people would. They’ll point out a better way that we can do it, and they’ll help us make everything work as well as possible and work as easily as possible.”
Led by Student Body President Maggie King and Senior Class President Mollie Jones, SGA organized several ways for the spirit to spread throughout the student body.
“The Super Freedom Friday was one of our proudest events,” Jones said. “Maggie and I planned it for a while and worked on it all day to make it happen. But it was awesome and it turned out great. Everybody was willing to get rowdy and have fun.”
King and Jones worked to make the year the best for seniors while King worked to include the rest of the student body in the events SGA planned.
“We stood out because of how involved everyone was,” Morrison said. “We’re all really close, everybody is. There are not a lot of cliques. Everybody shows up to football games, to basketball games. We weren’t really spirited before, but the spirit rose throughout the year.”
Friday night, June 12, the 236 members of the Class of 2015 will receive their diplomas at 7:30 in Johnson Stadium, weather permitting. The seniors will receive six tickets each in case inclement weather forces the ceremony indoors.
The four top scholars from the class, King, Mali Khan, Amy Turlington and Haley Staton will present the senior reflection.
Seniors from the orchestra will provide special music, and the band will play.
“I think their dedication really stands out,” Perron said. “You’ve got some really smart, talented kids who are going happily into their futures. I think that they are going to land in the right place and make a huge difference wherever they are going.”
By Sophia Molina
