By Noor Abdullah, Staff Writer
Excitement filled the air at the Pokemon rally as students clad in blue, yellow, green, and red cheered loudly for their grades. January 20 marked Mills’ first indoor rally since pre-COVID days. A lot of the behind-the-scenes work went into making it the success that it was. Combined efforts between leadership students, school clubs, and teachers and staff created a fun atmosphere for all attending the rally.
Leadership students, headed by Ms.Zink and Ms.Dove, were responsible for most of the planning prior to the rally and setting up the day of. Bella Lozano (11) provided insight on what this process was like. “The pokemon theme was chosen before break and right when we came back from winter break we instantly started planning”. Leadership spent these short three weeks leading up to the rally organizing spirit days activities, planning games and competitions for the rally, sharing information through social media, and gathering and creating the decorations including posters, streamers, and balloons. “Mostly it was very fun, though the week leading up to the rally was very stressful, the day of the rally was very fun,” Bella shared.
The rally kicked off with a digital pokemon video, setting the scene for this colorful rally. The pokemon theme was brainstormed by leadership student Diego Santos (11) and supported by other leadership students who voted for his idea. Hailey Tan (11) commented on leadership’s choice of supporting Diego’s theme saying “He has been working very hard and we thought that it was time to bring one of his ideas to light.”
During the rally, the grades competed for the rally stick through a variety of games, at the very end juniors were victorious after a shoot-out, winning the rally stick and bragging rights.
Leadership student Matthew Tam (11) shared an unforeseen hiccup that occurred on rally day, “I had to fix the rally stick along with Kennedy and Gali, it fell apart before the rally”. The stick is made of PVC and covered in red streamers and has been ceremonially awarded to rally winners for as long as anyone can remember. Crisis averted, Matthew shares what the rest of the rally day was like for leadership students. “My least favorite part was cleaning up, we had to pop balloons, they scared me. But then Ms.Dove got us pizza to celebrate, so I felt better.”
School-run clubs also pitched in to present entertaining dances to rally attendees. The Latina Mentor Program (LMP) performed a traditional dance to the song “El Sauce Y La Palma” by Banda El Recodo. Ariadna Sanchez (12), Isabella Honorato(11), and Adrian Pinto(12) shared about all the time and practice that went into preparing to perform. The dance was choreographed by their dance instructor Kathryn Lauron and the dancers had two hour long practices twice a week leading up to the rally. They all agreed that despite the long hours of practice and nerves before the dance, it was all worth it. “It’s all for representation of the Latin community, let’s show it off.”, Ariadna Sanchez (12) stated.
Another entertaining performance was put on by the teachers and staff who surprised students with a choreographed performance to the Bay Area classic “Locked In” by P-Lo. Mr.Ding was the brains behind the dance as he came up with the idea, choreographed a dance, and hosted practices for teachers and staff before the rally. The dance contained mainly contemporary dance moves that Mr.Ding planned to impress the students. Ms.Donohoe was part of the group dance and when asked what encouraged her to dance she said “First, I love dancing, any opportunity to have fun. And second, we ask students all the time to take risks and be brave in class, to do things you’re not an expert at and to be ok with making a mistake and if we want ya’ll to do that we gotta do that too, we gotta model.”
Bella Lozano (11) summed up the feelings of all those who helped BTS on the day of the rally, “It was really fun to just spend a day with all my leadership friends, the aura of everyone there as our work for weeks all led up to this day and it was nice seeing our work pay off”.
