When planning spirit activities for a football game, a crucial part of an attendee’s experience is the surrounding atmosphere of the student body’s participation. The theme, the chants, the decorations, the free candy and swag all contribute to the MVHS spirit that flows through the stands, carefully curated by Leadership, in particular, the spirit commissioners.

Leadership starts off with a brainstorming session regarding themes before voting to determine which theme is the best. Some common sources of inspiration for the theme include social media posts from other schools’ games and ideas from apps like Pinterest. Sophomore and spirit commissioner Saanj Rao mentions other metrics used to find the best theme.

“We take into account previous themes that we’ve done and how well they’ve been executed by looking at the response from the student body,” Rao said. “We take into account how much participation we’ll expect at that football game and make the theme to incentivize more people to show up.”

Rao says that leadership tries to plan ahead during the school year depending on how many other events they have to handle that week. Normally, she says, they come up with themes a week or two in advance and try to identify how the themes chosen relate to previous events Leadership had planned.

“For the first football game, we tried to connect the themes,” Rao said. “Mr. Gan had given us the advice that it would be easier for people to dress up if the rally and football game had the same theme. If we made the football game separate, people would have to put in more effort, so they would be a little more hesitant to come because they would have to spend more effort getting ready.”

Rao explains that when football games are held on Saturdays or Thursdays, Leadership foresees a lower turnout, and thus decides to save their best ideas for games with higher anticipated turnouts such as those held on Friday. However, Rao says that they still put in effort to create quality themes for smaller games in order to incentivize more people to attend. Despite planning themes for games a week or two in advance, Leadership advisor Kenneth Gan recognizes the difficulties when it comes to picking the perfect theme, with repetition being one of them. 

“The biggest obstacle is making sure we’re not repetitive — making sure that we’re trying to be fresh and come up with something that is engaging and topical,” Gan said. “I think it’s probably the hardest thing, because it’s not as fun when you’re doing the same thing over and over again.”

Junior and former spirit commissioner Courtney Masli, says that one example of a theme that worked well was the USA theme for the Olympics, as it was very easy to dress up for, but was also relevant to the student body. Malsi says that leadership tries to make the themes they choose unique by adding certain unique interactive elements to them.

“We try to get them excited, and I feel like the decorations help people feel pumped to be there,” Masli said. “If you look at the front of the bullpen, one of the games had a bunch of posters so people could take pictures with something cute.”

While Masli believes the painted posters and decorations make a big impact on the students attending, Rao feels as though it’s the little things Leadership puts in that affect the students the most. Leadership includes candy, stickers, face paint, and free t-shirts at games in order to make the students excited for the game and bring school spirit to the stands.

Overall, Gan says that he tries to foster unique personal connections among the leadership students. He wants the ASB commissioners to try new things and tries not to interfere with the theme picking process. He believes they should have the freedom to choose their themes and do what is best for the student body in order to create community and spirit, as long as it is not inappropriate. 

“My favorite thing is being able to interact with kids in a fun and unique way,” Gan said. “Being able to see kids be passionate about things outside of their academics and their extracurriculars  is really cool to see, so I want to try and foster that environment as best as I can.”