In all my four years at McDowell, I have never once enjoyed attending a pep rally.

Three out of the four years I was in the marching band performing on the field, and this year I didn’t go because I had senior release, so I was glad I didn’t have to go because I’ve seen how the students look and feel in the stands. Even after performing with the band and sitting on the field, I wished I could just leave.

In a recent survey of 32 McDowell students, more than 55% of students say that they only go to the pep rallies because they are required to go, not because they want to.

Out of those 32 students, they seem to like the parts where the band plays, the cheerleaders dance, or the teachers compete. However, talking to my friends, I’ve noticed that nobody really likes the games. You know, the ones where our classmates get to be on the field playing and we just have to sit there watching.

According to the survey, about 45% of students say that they rarely or sometimes feel engaged at the pep rallies. I fullheartedly believe that this is from the lack of crowd participation.

From all the pep rallies I have gone to/participated in, I have not seen a lot of participation with the students. The most I’ve seen has been with which class can cheer the loudest, which isn’t all that much.

I’ll admit though, some of the games and competitions are fun to watch, but if it’s the same ones over and over again, it gets pretty boring.

The teacher and student dances are very fun and excite everyone, and 72% of students agree with me, as well, because who doesn’t love seeing their teachers do TikTok dances? Aside from that though, a lot of it gets redundant, like the inflatable suits. How much longer are we going to have to watch kids run around in them? Why can’t we do something new?

Survey results mentioned adding “more crowd involved competitions/games” or maybe “throw some shirts in the stands.”

At football games the cheerleaders will stunt into a circle and connect their hands to make a hoop, then have the mob throw their pom poms in the hoop. We could do that for pep rallies, too. If we did that we could then make it into a game. They could move to each grade section and see which class can make the most in. I don’t know about you, but that sounds much more fun to me.

We always talk about dressing up for white out games, so why not send some mob t-shirts into the crowd to encourage people to wear them?

I know these are just a few things, but I believe it could make the pep rallies better for those of us in the stands.

I just want our school to go into the big games, like football and basketball, feeling pumped up, not bored. If we want to win against Cathedral Prep, our biggest rival, then we need to be hyped and ready for the games. Sure we were not the ones on the field or court playing, but crowd spirit is definitely important to boost the teams’ morale. Let’s fix our pep rallies, one chant at a time.