After a tight final day of Spirit Week 2013, the seniors were able to pull ahead and clinch the victory on Friday with an impressive performance at the lunch rally, a well-built float and cohesive Spirit Dance after having trailed the sophomore class for the whole week. The sophomores came in second place, beating out the junior class by 325 points and losing to the seniors by the same margin. The freshman class came in last, trailing the juniors by a total of 875 points.

However, this year’s Spirit Week was marred by much controversy, as tensions between the junior and sophomore classes grew to extreme levels, resulting in a physical altercation and food being thrown at the sophomore spirit dancers. In addition, the senior class began to panic and there was a frenzy throughout the class’ Facebook group when they fell behind early in the week.

Despite the final result, each class had a defining moment during this year’s Spirit Week. For the freshmen, their moment came during Thursday’s advisory rally, when freshman Miles Tention went on to beat both senior Noah Phillips and junior Kevin Mullin in the 3-point shootout to secure the class’ only first place finish in the week. Tention sank 18 threes in the final round. Freshman Noa Ben-Efraim was very excited about the her class’ performance this year and about the future Spirit Weeks to come.

“Spirit Week was a great experience to be a part of and I’m looking forward to the years to come as our grade improves,” Ben-Efraim said. “I’m really impressed with the sophomores because they put up a good fight, but I’m glad the seniors won overall.”

The sophomores had many wins during week, winning “Best Dressed” almost every day and having some of the loudest cheers. The class also won the Wednesday lunch rally, which involved three “Minute to Win it” games, furthering their lead on the seniors for the day. Sophomore Ariya Momeny was extremely impressed by his class and their showing of school spirit.

“Spirit Week was an awesome experience like it is every year, but this year, we all came together and supported each other so much…it was amazing,” Momeny said. “Everyone put in 110 percent effort and it really brought our class together, and it made us all glad to be from the Class of 2016, but mostly, glad to be Vikings.”

Although the juniors came in third, the class had some positive moments throughout the week, including winning best dressed on Monday for their theme of “Yellow Submarine.”

“I think the sophomore class did a decent job pulling it together with the cheers and games to almost come out with a win,” junior Anish Haris said. “They definitely had their A-game on, but it just didn’t seem like it was enough to beat the senior class.”

Unfortunately, some members of the junior class were involved in incidents ranging outside of Spirit Week, leading the entire junior class to be docked points — not helping their chances of even getting second in Spirit Week.  Lost sportsmanship points increased class tension.

“Spirit Week is supposed to be a friendly competition, but I think the food fights and food throwing is just going too far,” Haris said. “I’m not sure who was involved, but the few who were part of it should realize that their actions ruin the fun for everyone else.”

Aside from the altercations, the week proved to be extremely fun and exciting for all of those involved, resulting in a surprisingly large turnout at the Homecoming dance, with a reported 750 students attending. Senior Hope Crockett praised ASB on their transparent point system and gave her respect to the sophomore class as a whole.

“[The second place victory for the sophomores] showed that Spirit Week really isn’t rigged anymore, and that seniors aren’t guaranteed the win,” Crockett said. “Also, it seemed that some judges wanted to make an example out of our class, since some of the subjective judging was questionable in my opinion. How did sophomores win best dressed four out of the five days? Especially on generations day. I have to hand it to the class of 2016, they’re pretty good and remember, we did what they did our sophomore year.”