Classes competed for the Spirit Champion title at the annual Spirit Rally for the fourth and final day of Spring Spirit Week in the Zhang Gymnasium today. The seniors prevailed with 3700 points, followed by the juniors with 3350 points, sophomores with 2575 points and the frosh with 1325 points.
“It was nice to win Spirit Rally for our last year,” spirit dance choreographer Kallie Wang (12) said. “It’s always nice even if you don’t win in the dance or in the banner or other spirit activities to just use the time to bond with the rest of your class. It’s also just a celebration of your class, your friends, of the community around you, and I definitely will miss Spring Rally and Spirit dance a lot.”
Each class performed choreographed dances based on their respective movie franchises: “Star Wars” for the seniors, “Fast and Furious” for the juniors, “Avengers” for the sophomores and “Men in Black” for the frosh. Students incorporated various themed props into their routines.
Frosh donned green alien headbands and featured inflatable props like a cow and an alien, while sophomores used green and red finger lights to represent Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch, along with silver pom-poms for their Thor-themed dance.
“We knew we wanted to incorporate the Thanos glove and the Infinity Stones because we wanted to center the dance around Thanos,” spirit dance choreographer Grace Yao (10) said. “But some of the different props like the thumb or the finger lights for Doctor Strange came later as we were choreographing. The lights are kind of our thing now. It’s become a tradition, because we used it first last year and that was a massive success.”
Juniors handmade four cardboard cars to simulate a race between the four grades and incorporated black and white racing flags into their routine. The seniors, with 120 dancers, featured lightsaber duels and characters from the Star Wars series, including Yoda and Darth Vader. They concluded their performance by tossing green graduation caps up into the air to symbolize their final spirit rally of high school.
“My favorite part of the rally is honestly watching all of the spirit dances,” Kallie said. “It’s kind of kept a secret between grades what each dance will look like. As a senior, I didn’t know what the freshmen or sophomores or juniors dances looked like before today, and getting to watch and see what people in other grades have created together with their friends is something that’s really cool.”
Judges ranked seniors first place for spirit dance, juniors second, sophomores third and frosh last.
“Although we were disappointed that we got third, everyone agreed that our spirit dance was really cool,” student choreographer Christian Tian (10) said. “Being able to hear that other people recognized our work made everyone really happy overall. We’re just getting better every rally, and seeing improvement is probably one of the best things ever. I’d rather see improvement than high scores every time.”
Performances from Kinetic Krew and the varsity cheer team accompanied the event. Kinetic Krew kicked off the rally with an energetic hip-hop routine called “Dirt Though.” The varsity cheer team performed a routine to “Applause” by Lady Gaga that featured multiple technical tricks.
Two elected representatives from each grade participated in three relay games organized by Harker Spirit Leadership Team. In the first, Real vs. AI, participants identified which of the two given images was AI-generated. The second game challenged students to shoot balls into a basket in the center of the gym from poly spots, collecting the spots they made. For the third game, each class calculated the sum of numbers on notecards hidden beneath the student bleachers.
Seniors took first place in the relay, with sophomores and juniors tied for second and frosh in last place.
In the scream-off competition, seniors secured first with 124.9 decibels, followed by juniors with 123.5 decibels, frosh with 122.1 decibels and sophomores with 121.8 decibels.
The Dean’s Game challenged each grade’s deans to write down as many dog breeds as they could and then high-five an equal number of people who have dogs. Frosh class dean Jeannette Fernandez won first, and sophomore class dean Carol Green came in second, followed by junior class dean Brian Larsen in third and senior class dean Meredith Cranston in fourth.
To end the rally, Upper School Director of Student Organizations Eric Kalbrier awarded the Spirit of Spirit Award to Spanish teacher Diana Moss for her unwavering eagerness to promote spirit and inspire others.
The total scores of each class was a culmination of the spirit events in the weeks leading up the Spirit Rally. For banner painting, seniors, juniors, sophomores and frosh came in first, second, third and last, respectively. For dress-up, juniors and seniors tied for first, while frosh and sophomores tied for second.
“I’m so proud of all of the classes,” Student Activities Board member Ava Alvarez (11) said. “This year in particular, I’m really proud of the spirit at Harker, and how much that has changed over the years. I love seeing everyone get involved, seeing the other classes cheer for each other. It just really shows that spirit is about the community.”