“10! 0-9! 0-8! 0-7!” Always taking place on the day before homecoming, the pep rally entitles us to represent our class. It’s the last day of spirit week when each class goes all out in spirit and really celebrates being a student at PBHS. Imagine it…all four classes yelling their years, cheer and pom performances pumping up the crowd, the homecoming court being announced, and the step team performing…on the track?

As the 2006-07 year began, the upperclassmen were shocked and somewhat dismayed at how high the freshmen class count was. Halls were crowded more than ever as the freshmen added up to about 525 people, which is 100 more than last year’s freshmen class. Add that to the rest of the Panthers, and Paint Branch has approximately 1,800 student bodies.

For the first time in the school’s history the pep rally was held outside on the bleachers. Perhaps Ms. Dixon felt that, with the overpopulation of the freshmen class, it would be a fire hazard to cram everyone into the gym and be much too crowded. Though these intentions are understandable, I honestly feel that even this small change (the outside location) made the whole tradition awkward. It was about 70 degrees on the day of the pep rally and even though that is wonderful weather, it’s hard to have much spirit with the sun blazing so intensely. Yes, the poms and cheer performances were great (as always) and students had more room to go crazy, but not many people could be heard because of all the open space. Also, some people, such as me, were looking forward to the step team’s performance and became disappointed when we could barely hear them. This ultimately caused people to stop paying attention to a team that worked hard to perfect their routine. I guess we could have just pretended to actually hear them stepping, but that’s not fun at all. When the homecoming courts and athletes were called out, it was just weird because we all know that you can’t make a proper entrance outside, and making an attempt to actually make this happen made everything awkward.

If this change becomes permanent, then I don’t think that any pep rally will be as fun or as filled with spirit as others have been.