A student-led and organized field day was held May 17 in the gym. Then students helped organize the event. They included Madison Campbell, Jackson Gula, Cece Hall, AB Houser, Zianni Houston, Briana Hushion, Charles Ivory, Mckenzie LaGuardia and Ethan Laryea.
“I think I was chosen to help just because a lot of us have been leaders within the school for a longer period of time and it was a very diverse group, each from different friend groups and stuff like that,” said Houser.
The student leaders attended a meeting at Maplewood Career Center In February, with the Portage Youth Summit Coalition. Other Portage county schools in the Portage district. They came up with some goals that they wanted to address as a result of issues seen within the school and students.
For their major goals to follow through with, they chose alcohol and drug use. The schools met and brainstormed ideas in the following months and came up with a field day to encourage outdoor activity. The idea was to promote better health while also involving students in friendly competitions or leisurely group activities.
Unfortunately due to the weather not everyone was able to participate and the activities were limited. There was a last minute change to have it in the gym instead of outside.
“I think it still went fairly well even though we believe it would have been better outside because you could participate in more events and not in front of the whole school which seems to freak people out,” said Mckenzie LaGuardia.
Even though field day was moved indoors, there were still many fun activities that the students got to take part in. Some activities included musical chairs, tug of war, relay race, and wacky waiter.
“My favorite activity I think was the relay race because it started the event off on a fun, goofy note which I think helped to bring more people in,” LaGuardia said.
Many students left early, however, due to not wanting to partake in the event. In future years, SHS might not be able to arrange fun things like this because of the lack of participation.
“SHS had 53 sign outs last Friday,” said attendance officer Julie Neal.
If the student team gets to organize something like this again, they said they would do some things differently.
“If we were to have to do a field day again inside we would probably plan more large-scale activities to allow a greater number of people to participate but due to being inside that is difficult in the small area,” Hushion said.
The event also had to be called early due to the competitiveness of the students. Many took it very seriously which led to some issues.
“It got to the point where there were some negative things taking place like some pretty heated arguments and possibly some physical altercations,” McCann said.
