Leadership, band, and cheer students have spent weeks preparing for the pep rally on Friday, September 13. A pep rally’s success depends on the student body to bring the energy. 

Band director Micah Lee feels passionately about building a positive, spirited school climate. Lee appreciates how the students take charge of events like this and the engagement from watching students.

“The more you [bring the energy], the more ingrained it gets into the school culture,” Lee said. “One of the best things about Louisa County Public Schools is that culturally it is a good district overall. When you find those moments to be able to bring a student body together so that everyone can be sucked into becoming like one family.”

Leadership teacher Meredith Williamson shares Lee’s enthusiasm for student engagement. Williamson believes that students’ positive energy from the school day helps translate into the stadium for the football game on Friday night.

“I’m always excited to see the kids who don’t normally participate, participate,” Williamson said. “[There are always the] kids that want to participate, but sometimes when you do games, or sing-a-longs and chants in each section, you see kids chanting you don’t normally see. I like to see that because it hypes everybody up, even if they’re doing it to be sarcastic, they’re still participating.”

Many students do not realize that pep rallies are completely student-organized and student-run. Willamson’s leadership class has been preparing for this pep

 rally since this school year began.

“I’m excited to see how they do their pep rally,” Williamson said. “It is a little bit later this year, so I’m hopeful they will be able to get organized a little bit better than before. The students dictate the games on the survey, and we try to follow through with that. [Leadership students] come up with the games, and then the script is written entirely by students.” 

Senior leadership student Stephen “Luke” Rowan shares plans that the leadership class has for their first pep rally, such as returning games like musical chairs, as well as new ones like the toilet paper toss. 

“As a student, I participated in every game that they ever had, and so now I’m like the Embassy of it,” Rowan said. “At the pep rally, I just want to see everyone get excited for it.  I want to see everyone just get hyped up for the football game and to see everyone excited.”  

Williamson speaks about how getting students engaged is super important. Following up on how she enjoys seeing the positive energy at the pep rally as well as the students enjoying themselves. 

“It’s fun to see the students all enjoying themselves and hanging out with friends and bringing that positivity to the school building,” Willamson said. “Like bringing that positive atmosphere into the football game on Friday night, because that is such a positive environment.”