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Mady Caywood

Students and teachers decked the halls with their festive ugly sweaters, hats and more on Friday.

Last week was Harvest Week, and it was jam-packed with fun activities and dress-up days. Students engaged in the exciting events over the course of six days, providing a welcome accompaniment and contrast to the potential oncoming stress of finals.

The basketball game on Tuesday provided an exciting and competitive aspect of Harvest Week while still collecting items for the food drive as students and parents brought cans to donate. “Everyone played really well. It was very suspenseful, it was fun watching them play,” said Jude Slader (9) about the Mustang Boys’ smack-down on their Rye opponents with a final score of 65-24.

“It was a little bit wild,” said Gideon Aigner (10) about the Varsity game, “Moral was quite high when I arrived. Everyone was feeling good because both JV and C team had already won. As the game went on moral kept going up because we were doing really well.”

The dress-up days of the harvest week were much different from those the school normally holds; these new dress-up days also saw the highest participation from the student body than has been seen for previous events. Monday saw the student body decked out in their finest meme gear, “Meme Monday was super fun because you got to see different people’s sense of humor and level of commitment. You kind of need to either go big or go home,” said Grace Trahey (11). The next day, students talked the “Tok” with their finest E-Boy and VSCO girl outfits for Tik Tok Tuesday, “It seemed like everyone enjoyed dressing up either as a VSCO girl or E-Girl. Everyone got really creative,” said freshman Kaleena Jones. Wednesday found students choosing sides in the Country versus Country Club theme with giant belt buckles the size of dinner plates facing off against visor hats and polo shirts, “It was cool because we live in Colorado, so almost everyone owns flannel,” said Trahey, “It was a more chill theme day so a lot of people participated.” On Thursday, the students were all tuckered out so they wore pajamas, blankets and other sleep accessories. “Pajama day was pretty nice, I got to be comfy at school,” said Allie Robbins (12). Friday’s usual festivities were accentuated by the arrival of Christmas hats, sweaters, elves and Santas. 

Throughout the entire week, the classes of the student body competed in a food drive competition, bringing in cans and other goods to place under banners to push their grade ahead of the others. The freshmen class of 2023 was ahead until Friday afternoon when the senior class miraculously pulled ahead with a massive contribution of cans. “It was cool to see the seniors pull through,” said Bri Anderson (12) referencing the large amount of food items that were donated by seniors. The final count gave the seniors free entrance to the Harvest Dance.

“I thought it was pretty crazy,” said Madeline Davis (12), “I walked in first block and I was like, ‘oh yikes’ and then I saw the pile again fourth block and I thought, ‘they must have put it all on our table or something.’”

The dance was the perfect way to wrap up the events of Harvest Week. Students hung out in the commons socializing or danced to the DJ tunes in the gym, “The dance was an awful lot of fun,” said Ainger, “It started out slow but it got better as it went on. The height was probably the Cupid Shuffle, that’s when everyone was there and participating.” The dance also helped round out the food drive by giving students an incentive to bring in their last cans; each can that students brought in took one dollar off the admission price.

“I didn’t personally dress up but it was fun to see how people chose to dress up,” Payten Smith (9) said, “It was kind of a bummer when the freshmen lost because we were in the lead for a while but, yay seniors!”

The Harvest Week was an exciting series of events and activities that brought the school together for fun and festivities that were main drive for the week. It’s good to see that the dress-up days and events went so well, with many students participating and enjoying themselves, releasing stress, and letting go before the long haul of finals.