Pep Rally Gets a Face Lift No videos, no inside jokes, mixed results
By Neelesh Jain ’10
News Staff Reporter
Last Friday, November 9th, Choate students and faculty gathered for the Deerfield Day pep rally. The pep rally began with Blue team students congregating at the Hill House steps and Gold team students gathering on the Memorial House steps. Once everyone arrived, the torchlight parade to the PMAC began. Blue and Gold teams cheered all the way down. When they arrived at the PMAC they saw Mr. Shanahan, in the boar costume, sweeping the floor. Mr. Shanahan told Choate students to “SWEEP” the Deerfield day athletic competitions as Choate did two years ago. Mr. Gallagher took the stage as M.C. to introduce varsity teams and eventually the step squad. During the pep rally itself, Mr. Gallagher helped to get everyone excited by starting up various cheers. After presentations by all the teams, team captains armed with torches led everyone over to the Deerfield dragon and lit it on fire. Jon Maddalone ’10, a new student, said that, “the rally was awesome—it really showed a lot of school spirit, and was just really fun to be part of.”
Director of Student Activities Chris Bielizna explains that set-up for the event needs to be done “well in advance, almost year by year.” He continues, “Especially the piece of being in contact with the Fire Department and communicating with Community Safety to make sure they’re watching the roads.” While Mr. Bielizna works on these arrangements and others, the school’s master carpenter, Rich Stainton, is booked to help create the dragon, and an entertainments specialist is booked to do the sounds and some of the lighting in the PMAC.
Mr. Bielizna explains, “Mr. George Hall [the entertainments specialist] is essential to the lighting and sound from the PMAC end of things and has been instrumental in helping the rally for many years.” The amount of effort and work put into setting up the pep rally is enormous. Mr. Morris, who is primarily in charge of the bonfire, amasses dry brush and other burning materials for the dragon throughout the year and makes sure the building of the dragon is completed in time for the rally. After the dragon is built, Mr. Bielizna decorates it. Mr. Morris also spent a total of 25 hours working on the 15 minute slide show.
This year’s bonfire had none of last year’s pyrotechnics—rockets flying at the dragon or other fireworks this year—because last year was a special celebration. According to Mr. Morris, “The pyrotechnics had been funded by the development office to celebrate the kick off of the capital campaign.” A few students expressed some disappointment at this year’s lack of pyrotechnics; Christian Keggi ’10 said that, “This year’s bonfire kind of let me down, I was hoping for fireworks like last year.” Mr. Bielizna says, “On another special occasion, the bonfire might have pyrotechnics again, but last year was kind of a one-time deal.”
Preparing the Rally
In preparation for the PMAC part of the rally, Mr. Bielizna sent out e-mails to the team captains of varsity sports and to the step squad asking them to “start thinking about what they want to do, and giving them some guidelines.” New guidelines this year ruled out video projections from teams. Mr. Bielizna also “stressed things like no inappropriate dancing, dress, language, or subject matters which we’ve had problems with in the past.” According to Mr. Bielizna, Senior Soccer was extremely inappropriate last year and so they were banned this year. However, this decision was revisited because all of the seniors from last year had left and this year’s batch of seniors made an impassioned plea for inclusion. Mr. Ford decided to allow senior soccer to do a quick presentation that required the lights to be up, no music, and no dancing. Instead, Senior Soccer was only allowed to lead a cheer. Susan Chae ’10 and Bora Kim ’10 said, “We missed senior soccer’s performance during last year’s pep rally.” But Mr. Bielizna says, “Since senior soccer didn’t blow it this year, they are off pep rally probation and will be fully part of the Pep rally next year.” Also during the planning stage, Mr. Bielizna asked teams for a “CD and a paragraph describing what each team wanted to do on stage,” sending team captains reminders every two weeks. The deadline to get these items in was November 5th. Some teams, however, did not make the deadline and so Mr. Bielizna decided to extend it to the next day. “The reason for the deadline this year,” says Mr. Bielizna, “is so that I can get the CDs to the entertainments specialist and he can get them ready.” Despite the extension, he says, “Some teams still weren’t able to get it together, such as football and boys varsity soccer, which was problematic.”
Looking Ahead
Looking toward the future of the pep rally, Mr. Bielizna says that this year is “the beginning of a vague restructuring.” He continued, “where there’ll always be a team that closes the Pep rally, step squad will definitely be in there—we love having them—but there won’t be as many performance pieces, instead more audience engaging activities, and there won’t be a ton of videos.” Mr. Bielizna feels that there were definitely “some growing pains this year in terms of the pep rally.” Over the next few years he wants to bring the feeling closer to that of a real rally. Mr. Bielizna hopes to phase out some parts of the pep rally that seem “flat” to him, such as “teams doing inside jokes like announcing team members as Susie PGs only.” He hopes to keep refining the rally so that eventually everyone is “whipped up in a frenzy” by the time they get out of the PMAC. “The pep rally has been tweaked over the years and is constantly evolving as times change,” he says. Some other ideas for the future include a dragon club that studies dragon lore and eventually helps to build a full size dragon. Along with this, Mr. Bielizna is interested in adding more props and, possibly, skits with coaches and deans to the pep rally.
Also, “a big dragon parading down the street might be cool,” he imagines, “ although it would be very tough to make a full sized dragon since we are limited by the fire department’s safety rules.” Special events during the week such as “dress like a Deerfield kid” and “wear jeans if you wear blue and gold” days that build up the hype about Deerfield day are a step in the direction Mr. Bielizna wants to pursue. The ultimate goal is to transform the Deerfield Day pep rally from a performance-based event to something more like a traditional rally that summons up support for Choate and represents Choate’s athletic program.
The dragon representative of Deerfield goes up in flames at the annual bonfire. PHOTO/Greg Stasiw ’11
