On the 17th of October the SGA, student governmental association, hosted a pep rally to get everyone excited for the upcoming SAISA games of boys and girls volleyball and swimming, as well as to welcome back the ISTA students who went away on the first weekend of the October break to Singapore to partake in theatre workshops centered around the DP theatre assessments.

I was given the task of presenting the pep rally. Although I have spoken in front of large crowds like this practically every month of year, its still nerve-racking. Not only did I have to introduce everyone, I also had to ensure we followed the script which ended up having some last minute changes. The SGA spent the lunch time meeting creating shakers for the audience to show their spirit with, creating a playlist full of hit songs, and creating the script for the event.

Sam did amazing taking care of the technical aspects such as ensuring the mic and music is loud enough, a problem we’ve struggled with in the past, and played the videos on the screen for each of the groups. Sungjun, Tashvi and Evan pepped up the crowd and got everyone full of spirit before the rally began. Since Gecko Gear had been selling t-shirts in support of SAISA athletes, many people in the crowd were wearing them and already were engaging in the pep rally before it even began.

During the pep rally we introduced the teams, who was in them, their coaches, and played a game with them. The game we played was called cups. Two people from different SAISA groups would stand opposite each other, I would then call out random body parts which they would touch before eventually calling out “CUP”. When I did this they would reach forward and grab the cup that was placed between them. This game with high tension and focus ended up with Akash winning the final with lots of cheer.

After welcoming SAISA, we had to welcome back a few geckos from their ISTA trip, of which I was one. During one of our workshops, collaboratively creating original theatre, we explored what it is to be a clown. It came down to the principals of having fun and making people laugh so that is exactly what we did. We got everyone up on their feet and danced the macarena. It was nice to see how everyone was willing to do it including teachers and parents. My hope is to do more of these in the future and involve more groups withing OSC such as primary, the arts and even things people do outside of school.

Featured Image Credit: OSC School Photographer