Cranberry High School students enjoy a “lunch luau” provided by O’Neil’s Quality Foods. (By Cranberry Chronicles staff)
By LAUREN REMBOLD & JENNA SEIGWORTH
Student contributors
This week, Cranberry High School has been buzzing with a newfound spring spirit despite the gloomy weather outside. Senior High Student Council and Heather Motter’s second period class worked hard creating a “Think Spring Spirit Week” to energize the dark dreary time of year.
Cranberry students spent the week decorating their homeroom doors, dressing up along with each day’s decided theme, and participating in a canned food drive benefiting Cranberry Food Pantry.
When asked why student council chose to bring this week of spring to life, Saige Slater, student council president, said, “Because there is such a long period of time when students come back from winter to spring, we wanted to break it up and give the students a fun week!”
Teacher Zach Bedee’s homeroom created a PAC-Man door decoration complete with sound and lights. (By Cranberry Chronicles staff)
Monday was Hat Day, Tuesday was Tie-Dye Day, Wednesday had the students getting “Dressed with Your Eyes Closed,” and Thursday was Tourist Day. Students who participated and dressed according to the daily themes received a free smoothie with their lunches. Friday was Homeroom Wars, pitting students and teachers alike against each other with homerooms dressed up in correlation with their door’s theme for the ultimate test of school spirit.
Meagan Heckathorne, a sophmore, said, “My favorite day was Tourist Day because there was a lot of food and cheerfulness throughout the school!”
However, another student, Madi Buchanan, countered with “I liked Tye-Dye day because we all got to be hippies for a day.”
Cranberry High School cafeteria works prepare to serve a “lunch luau” provided by O’Neil’s Quality Foods. (By Cranberry Chronicles staff)
On Thursday, for Tourist Day, the cafeteria planned a special “lunch luau” for the students. They hired O’Neil’s Quality Foods, who catered the event with the cafeteria ladies’ help. Gale O’Neil, the owner, and his partner brought a massive pig for the students to experience an authentic pig roast.
“It was a bop,” said eleventh grader Mackenzie Wenmoth. She also added that it was “the greatest thing that CHS has ever done!”
Another student, Chelsea McKissick, remarked that “It made me feel like I was on vacation!”
Along with the pork and sauerkraut supplied by O’Neil’s, the cafeteria offered macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, stuffing, baked beans, and lemonade. The lunch ladies worked diligently in an assembly line with the O’Neil’s duo in order to accommodate all of the students getting lunch that day.
An Easter Bunny with her eggs. (Photo by Cassidy Miller)
Alex Best, a senior, enthusiastically announced, “I thought it was fab-tastic, a mix of fabulous and fantastic!”
“It was extremely tasty. Also, it made everyone happy! Smiles could be seen on every face,” proclaimed Michael Gunn.
On Thursday, district office personnel judged the doors that had been decorated by the students in the previous days. Friday, the same panel of judges returned to score the homeroom themes.
Those two scores combined, in addition to the number of donated canned food items, deemed the winner of “Think Spring Spirit Week.” Two rooms, the Student Service Center and Trisha Dixon’s homeroom, took first placed in the overall score for the week.
Teacher Michael Poff’s “Ninja-tastic” students. (By Cranberry Chronicles staff)
Friday’s homeroom wars left CHS with a sense of springtime nearing. Some of the highlights of the theme wars included Zach Bedee’s room with a Pac Man topic, Motter’s famous “Oh the Places You’ll Go theme”, Dixon’s Easter Bunny photo booth, and Michael Poff’s musical ninjas!
When asked how his homeroom felt after the day, Poff responded, “They’re ninja-tastic!”
Winners of the contest were announced during a live performance by Bob Cates, a renowned entertainer from Ontario, Canada. The classrooms who won took part, front and center, of Cate’s routine during the assembly on Friday. Additionally, students whose homeroom won will receive a pizza party.
Cate’s act featured fun-filled entertainment that kept the CHS students applauding constantly, spreading laughter and cheers throughout the Berry Dome. Portions of his performance had many students on the edge of their seats, biting their nails, in anticipation for what would happen next. From throwing knives while riding a unicycle, to corny jokes and wand twirling, to some insanely hectic juggling, Cate’s time with CHS was full of stupendous antics.
Teacher Heather Motter’s homeroom students decorated their door with the “Oh the Places You’ll Go” theme. (By Cranberry Chronicles staff)
“It was unlike anything Cranberry has ever done before,” announced Cassidy Miller. “I thought that it was nice how he included the student body in his performance!”
While the focal point was generating school spirit, which it certainly did, the biggest reward was the canned food drive. One thousand five hundred and fifty-five items were donated by students and staff, surpassing the original set goal.
Sara Uddin commented that one of the great things about the food drive was that “It allows for students in our school to realize there are people in the community that struggle, and the food drive is something that we can do to help!”
One thing is for sure, the “Think Spring Spirit Week” will become a Cranberry tradition for years to come.
When Motter was asked how she felt the Spirit Week went, she replied: “It certainly was a great week to be a Berry. I have never been more proud of our student body. They displayed a tremendous amount of school spirit and teamwork this week to contribute to a good cause and make the week a huge success!”
Lauren Rembold, Jenna Seigworth, Cassidy Miller, Darian Senn, Lindsay Perry and AJ Howard contributed to this story. They are students at Cranberry High School and members of Cranberry Chronicles, the school’s journalism/publications group.
