Annandale’s first spirit week this year has come to an end. It was held the week of September 26 in honor of the homecoming celebration. Many people may begin to wonder why it could be important to participate. The week is used as a way to unite the school and be able to have fun and act as a way to take your mind off of the school workload and get involved in the community.

“School spirit is important to our community because it shows support to our school, staff members, teammates, and to our friends,” said freshman Yeslie Salgado.

Spirit week is a fun way to unite students, create fun memories as a kid and show off your school pride. Showing your school spirit can also be about showing up for school sporting events and cheering on the players.

“Having school spirit is really important because it helps people have a sense of belonging. It will give them reasons to like the school to come to school,” said sophomore Rihana Muhiden. “It’ll just help people come together, have something they can relate to and just have something to be proud of and it makes your high school years a lot more enjoyable.”

Having school spirit can allow certain students to take their mind off of outside of school problems like family issues even if it is just for a bit, some use school as their escape from home to be able to express themselves and just have fun and spirit week makes just that a bit more exciting.

“It’s important to have school spirit because it builds community and it makes sure that the students feel like they belong to something more than themselves. It makes you excited. It makes you pumped about being at school and enjoying other people’s company. You get to be weird and wacky and fun,” said field hockey’s JV coach Emily Harrel.

Another way of showing school spirit is attending the pep rallies. Oftentimes events like these take lots of planning to secure the safety of everyone and also take other hard work and planning and something as simple as being present and cheering. The whole point of pep rallies is to get excited and get inspired.

“When schools, students and staff have a lot of school spirit, I think more and more students get excited about coming to school, making new friends, trying new activities, and things that they may not otherwise do. Unless there is a lot of school spirit around the event,” said Principal Shawn DeRose.