Students from all four grades rushed to Spirit Night Friday evening in attempts to finalize their floats, eagles, and skits before Homecoming week.

The Spirit Club hosted Spirit Night, an event which allowed each class to add final touches to all of their Homecoming decorations.

“I think Spirit Night turned out really well. A lot of people showed up, and I think a ton of work was finished as well,” co-Spirit Club president Katy Sanchez (11) said. “For the most part, I think everyone had a lot of fun making their classes’ eagles and floats.”

This year’s Homecoming theme is “Invasion by…” and each class picked a theme with which they will ‘invade’ the school. The seniors chose superheroes, the juniors chose reality TV, the sophomores chose Care Bears, and the freshmen chose the supernatural.

Each class has to paint an eagle, design a float, and write a skit incorporating its respective themes.

To create the floats, each class received a red flyer wagon and faced the challenge of creating a design that not only fits its theme but one which can also be pulled in the Panoply of Chaos, a parade that will take place on Wednesday during long lunch.

The freshmen spent Spirit Night putting the final touches on their float, which features a metallic silver box encircling a bloody hand.

The sophomores, however, were behind on the progress of their float, which by the end of the night was only the red wagon and some wires, lacking any other decorations.

“We’re trying to incorporate our electrical genius that we have in our class and we’re trying to get some carebears to do some really cool stuff,” said Nikhil Parmar (10) a member of his class’s float committee.

Although the juniors did not finish their float completely, they made progress, adding touches of various reality TV props to their TV screen inspired design.

“We were just trying to get stuff started so that we can get stuff ready by parade day,” said junior class Treasurer David Lin, who was in charge of the float’s construction.

For the seniors’ float, they split their design into four different sections, each one featuring a superhero defending his respective city.

“We wanted to make it big and flashy so we got a big platform and some robotics members helped build a motor to rotate it,” said senior class Vice President Dora Tzeng.

In addition to the float, each class is required to paint an eagle that will be displayed throughout Homecoming Week.

Despite the fact that they have no experience, the freshmen had no trouble designing their eagle. The underclassmen took advantage of the extra time at Spirit Night and finished their eagle that they have been working on for the past week. They decided to paint skeletons onto the bird itself for their supernatural theme and even integrated the other class’s themes into their base.

On the other hand, the sophomores felt challenged by their Care Bear theme. Although there were several disagreements about how to incorporate their theme, the sophomores finally painted the eagle rainbow pastel colors and Care Bears onto the base.

“Initially, a lot of us weren’t really happy with our theme and had no idea how to implement it in our eagle,” Kristen Park (10) said. “Despite the setbacks, I think we all worked really well together and pulled through. I’m really happy with the progress that we made tonight.”

As the two-time defending champion of the eagle painting contest, the junior class wanted to ensure that this year would be no different. Covering their eagle with pink glitter and jewels, the juniors also added a tutu and tiara to transform their bird into Honey Boo Boo. Since they picked reality TV as their theme, they revamped their base and turned it into a TV.

“The eagle team was amazing – they have been working diligently all week long,” Class of 2015 Dean Diana Moss said.
Students from the junior class even went in the next morning to put “finishing touches on their masterpiece.”

Inspired by its superhero theme, the senior class painted their eagle in hopes of mimicking Hulk. By working together and sharing ideas, they were able to finish by the end of the night.

“I’m really proud of my class’s eagle. My friends put a lot of time and effort into it and it came out beautifully,” ASB Treasurer Vincent Lin (12) said. “I have lots of respect for the people who worked on the eagle. I’m happy that we got so many people to come out and help this year.”

Spirit Night also gave each class extra time to write and plan out their skits for the rally.The seniors scrapped the script they had written previously and composed fresh and funnier dialogue, according to Class President Jithin Vellian.

“We’ll I’ve never been to Spirit Night before, but I have so much more respect for the people that always go,” Jithin said. “We are pretty much set, but we just need to tell our class what they have to do.”

Although the juniors had barely begun writing before the night, they were able to pull together their skit and make plans to record and rehearse line for the coming week.

“I think Homecoming being so early has definitely taken everyone by surprise. However, I think our skit is wonderful, and we have done all that we can with what we have and the situation we are in,” Spirit Coordinator Aaron Huang (11) said.

The juniors worked until about 7:30 on the skit, when they migrated over to their class dean Diana Moss’s room to review their work and discuss props and outfits for the skit, such as planning out what the skit’s “Kardashians” will wear on Friday.

Meanwhile, the sophomores struggled a bit to organize themselves to write the skit, but they finally came together to put a plan in action. Despite the fact that they were not able to complete the written dialogue by the time Spirit Night had ended, skit writers Arthur Goldstein, Namitha Vellian, Dhanush Madabusi, Shannon Richardson, and Raghav Jain set up a Google Hangout video chat later that night to pull the final pieces of their skit together. Although the skit still could use some further improvements, according to Arthur, they hope this year’s skit will be better than last year’s.

Concurrently, the freshman class bonded to gather ideas to finalize their class’s skit. Though the majority of the skit has already been completed, the freshmen skit coordinators hope to teach their class a small dance for the end of the performance, as a means to demonstrate their class spirit.

All four classes were able to progress on the status of their floats, skits, and eagles, solidifying most plans for next week’s Homecoming.

“Spirit night was awesome because it put us all in a controlled environment where we were focused on the task at hand,” Gaurav Kumar (12) said.

The eagles will be put up for display this coming Monday, the floats will be presented Wednesday during the Panoply Parade, and the skits will be performed Friday during the rally.