During Spirit Week, student council and the administration introduced the new concept of a point system with the maisons splitting up into purple and white teams to help bond the school and get everyone, including faculty, involved and competing against each other to gain the most points.

Maison numbers one-22 were purple and 23-43 were white. The teams dressed up in their colors for field day Sept. 21 and competed in activities and games to earn points for their respective team.

“It was fun because everyone just kind of went all out,” junior Bridget Schumm said. “Like normally when we have those vive sion Fridays people just wear the shirt and your skirt, but this was fun to just go all out.”

The idea for the new point system came from a conference in Washington DC that Student Council leader Jenny Brown-Howerton, Curriculum director Ellen Carmody, Principal Natalie McDonough, and Theology teacher Polly Holmes were able to attend. They toured four different high schools and got to see what types of events they were participating in and bring those back. They then took those ideas and tried to find a way to incorporate these events and up the spirit.  

“One of the goals student council had this year was to try to boost school spirit and try to get students more involved,” Brown-Howerton said, “so we thought this could be a fun way to do that.”

The main goal of this point system is to increase school unity by competing with maisons in the competition and to not separate things by grade according to Brown-Howerton. The point system of field day helped to increase the competition within the school and to make the girls more competitive with each other. They could earn points by winning games either individually like four-square, or with their team like in minute-to-win it. Maisons can also score points by showing up to events like Night of One Acts and sporting events.

“It promotes school spirit,” Schumm said. “People are just naturally driven to win so if you can make something a competition people are going to have fun with it.”

The point system also made it possible for the faculty to get involved in the competition and school spirit. Previously, the grade level competitions made it hard for the faculty to get truly involved. With the new points system, the faculty can participate, dress up, and earn points with their maison.

“Typically with the class competitions we aren’t engaged in one or the other,” Librarian Jenny Campbell said. “So its been really fun to have faculty get proud and cheer for their color.”