Every school year Park has its first pepfest of the year during the week leading up to the school’s homecoming game and dance. The pepfest gets the student body excited for the game and lets students show their spirit for the school with dress codes for each day of the week. Being the first pepfest of the year it takes a lot of preparation and organization from the student council and the student council advisors.
Junior Maggie Tight said preparations for the homecoming pepfest this year only took about three weeks to plan. The student council even planned before the 2024 school year had started.
“This year our pepfest only took about three weeks,” Tight said. “We started planning right before school started and used the two weeks we had before the pepfest during class to plan.”
Valerie Weaver, Spanish teacher and student council advisor at Park said it usually only takes a few student council members to plan for the pepfest. They’re asked to make outlines for the event. Then they typically have other students recruit the student body to participate in the activities.
“For pepfest we usually take a few student council volunteers who are excited about that event and we ask them to plan out the events for it and make an outline and make a script and then usually we will have other students kind of recruit for the activities that we have included in the pepfest,” Weaver said.
Tight said that the pepfest went well and that there was more student interaction this year then they’ve had in the past, and that there was a lot more energy.
“I think we got a lot more student interaction than we’ve had in previous years and some high energy which was great,” said Tight.
John Miller, a senior at the Park, said he thinks today’s pepfest was a success. He said that the whole student body was more involved.
“I thought everyone was getting into it in the crowd, I thought it was a really good pepfest,” Miller said.
Tight said her role in this year’s pepfest was to host. Some of her responsibilities were writing the script and thinking of activities.
“My role was hosting the pepfest today,” Tight said. “I helped writing the script and coming up with some of the activities”
Miller said he volunteered in the student vs staff volleyball game. He said there weren’t a lot of volunteers for the game and that he just raised his hand and went up there.
“I just kind of raised my hand and went up there because they didn’t have enough people,” Miller said.
Weaver said a big homecoming pep fest tradition the student council likes to continue at Park is the student vs staff game. She said that it’s a good way for the student body to connect when they may not know a lot of students at school. They can find connections by watching a teacher that they all know play the game.
“The staff vs student game is probably the biggest tradition we have right now. It’s really fun and you know students who maybe don’t know a lot of other students can at least relate to watching a teacher that they’ve all had together,” Weaver said.
Miller said this year the pepfest was really fun, and the student vs staff volleyball game was a great way for seniors to celebrate their last homecoming pepfest at Park.
“I thought it was really fun and I enjoyed playing volleyball with all my friends for my senior year,” Miller said.
Weaver said the student vs staff game creates a rivalry that’s exciting to watch and participate in, but she would like to find more traditions to add to the homecoming pepfest.
“Who doesn’t like that kind of rivalry, students vs teachers, so it’s just more motivating and exciting to watch, but I would like to find some new traditions to include,” Weaver said.
