On October 13, Linganore High School (LHS) held their annual Homecoming pep rally. Students and staff gathered in the gymnasium with overwhelming school spirit.
At the event, LHS fall sports teams were recognized for various accomplishments by Linganore’s Student Government Association (SGA) advisor Jeremy Brown, followed by several performances by students and a first-time performance by staff.
Following a week-long Homecoming spirit week, SGA president Genesis Maldonado announced the class scores for the week’s activities. While all students showed their school spirit by coordinating with a different theme each day throughout Homecoming week, the Class of 2024 won the spirit stick by earning the most points by the end of the week.
There were five student performances from JV and varsity cheer, pom and dance, STEP and band and colorguard. A final special performance involved the dance team and various LHS teachers. All of the performances gave students an opportunity to excite the crowd and show off their talents.
Towards the end of the pep rally, students from each grade participated in human ring toss. As part of the challenge, students had to spin around five times to make the activity harder. They then ran to the end of the cheer mat and put various pieces of clothing on in the correct order to beat the other students. As soon as they were completely dressed, their partner tossed hula hoops at them, imitating the typical ring toss game. In the end, the Class of 2027 pushed through and won the competition.
To honor October as breast cancer awareness month, English teacher Alexis Anzmann, a breast cancer survivor, gave a speech about her experience battling stage 4 breast cancer. She explained the importance of the month and why it is more than just the color pink. She went into detail about her personal story and how the disease has affected her life, reminding students that they need to self-advocate for their health the same as they would self-advocate in the classroom.
Junior Genevieve Vlha is one of the many students who enjoyed the pep rally. Vlha explained how much her homecoming spirits were boosted after attending the event.
“It was a great experience for me to be able to cheer on all of my friends currently in fall sports, especially the Poms team,” said Vlha.
Students of LHS are not the only ones that enjoyed this event– teachers and staff had a great time watching students perform and get recognized for their accomplishments. English Teacher Patrick Morgan expressed how important these events were to students and how they helped create more school spirit throughout the building.
“Pep rallies are important because they recognize all the hard work that students do in a variety of extracurriculars, as well as help build school spirit,” said Morgan.
From her experience, Maldonado has always seen the pep rallies as something fun to look forward to. She loves to see all the results from throughout the week, especially as she has been working hard to make the Homecoming events happen. She believes LHS can be brought together as one through our competitiveness and that can be seen at pep rallies.
“In my freshman year, I didn’t have that [pep rallies] with COVID, and being able to have that experience with the pep rally has always been super important for the past three years. Especially my senior year, it’s been really nice to get to be involved as SGA president,” said Maldonado.
Overall, students enjoyed a fun experience designed to bring the school community together in the lead up to Friday night’s Homecoming game against Middletown High School and the Homecoming dance.
Lancer Media issues a big “congratulations” to all fall athletes recognized and an “amazing job” to all of the performers!
