As a member of the class of 2023, I have to acknowledge that our freshman year hallway may have been the worst hallway Newman has seen. The theme was board games and, since we were the last pick, our theme was Clue. Unfortunately for our pep reps, we weren’t allowed to have any sort of violent imagery in our hallway (the whole premise of the murder mystery game). So, our entire grade of 100+ people showed up to hallway decorating with no premade decorations except for a few rolls of colored butcher paper. We tried to hang the blue, yellow, red, green, and white paper from the walls but, before the decorating was even finished, our hallway looked like a hurricane had come through the second floor of Lemle.

Then, in our sophomore year, the theme was cities around the world. As second to the last pick, we chose New York City. That unprecedented school year during a global pandemic, we were limited to only 25 people to decorate the hallway. Our new pep reps were determined to be better than the year and prepared many decorations for our hallway. Unfortunately, they were unable to attend hallway decorating and we were left to try to execute their vision without them. Ultimately, we resorted to consolidating our hallway with the few decorations that we had premade and frantically creating new ones. The freshmen class put in an admirable effort which led to our sophomore year hallway barely beating theirs. 

Needless to say, expectations for our class were low. Despite a longstanding tradition of juniors winning the spirit stick, the odds didn’t look the best for our class. The class of 2022 was determined to win the spirit stick twice. However, our grade was determined too. Under the leadership, of our newest pep reps (shoutout to Hillery Wynn and Weezy Biever), we were able to transform the foyer into a Halloween dreamscape. It featured a graveyard, candy bar, witch’s lair, and a full haunted house. This year the entire grade chipped in to bring decorations and we didn’t have to worry about making any decorations on the spot.  

All of our hard work paid off when Mrs. McCormick announced the spirit stick winner.