Since last year’s traditional events were canceled, half of the campus – the freshman and sophomores – never experienced a true Malvern spirit week.

Student Council Moderator, Mrs. Laurie Peslak, notes this unusual fact. 

“We usually get a lot of interest and a lot of participation with the dress-down days, and a general kind of buzz about campus. Especially with half of the classes never experiencing it, the hype is nice,” said Peslak. 

The student council has been meeting consistently, even before school started, to provide the best experience possible. 

“The student council met the week before classes started so that we could get started and try to figure out the activities, themes, and all the different things to make this a bit of a more normal year,” she said. “We’ve been meeting regularly since.”

With spirit week falling on a holiday and standardized testing day, there are few days of actual classes. Student Body President, Sonny Petricca ’22, believes it will still be a blast. 

“We usually have four or five days, but we worked around the schedule pretty well. We’re still getting in all the activities, and we’re starting on [the previous weeks] Friday to get an extra day,” Petricca said. 

Spirit week starts on a Friday with a jersey-themed dress-down day. The next Tuesday features a USA dress-down theme and wrapping up the day with Jimmy’s Barbeque coming to campus. 

“I love Jimmy’s Barbeque,” Peslak said. “It’s so casual and so much fun. The food is great and having all the different games available is very fun.”

Since Wednesday is a day for standardized testing, Thursday is the next day in spirit week. There will be a Hawaiin dress-down theme and a handball tournament at the end of the day in O’Neill.

In traditional Malvern fashion, there will be a pep rally filled with different activities to end out the week. 

“That was a huge part for us to make great, so we added a couple of activities,” Petricca said. 

One new activity was introduced by the Student Body Vice President Brennan Offshack ’22, suggesting a poetry slam. Peslak believes that a poetry slam is a great way to allow all students to have a chance to shine during spirit week.

“We wanted something maybe not athletic to reach everybody, and that’s when they thought of poetry slam,” Peslak said. 

Additional events include Grizzly Adams judging, tug-of-war, basketball contest, and lip sync battles. Petricca thinks the lip sync battle has a lot of potential.

“It’s not that hard to bring the energy for the lip sync battle. Whoever gets out there, the crowd usually gets pretty hype,” he said. “That’s probably one of my favorite events.”

Although many factors are back to normal, COVID-19 is still taken into consideration during planning. 

“We’re going to do everything in O’Neill so that there is a little more space,” Peslak said. “It’s been a little bit of a challenge, but I’m glad we’re at least able to do a few of the traditional things.”

Petricca can’t wait to see all the hard work pay off. 

“I hope to have a lot of fun. I hope the students like the new activities and get excited for the old ones because it’s been so long since we’ve had a spirit week here,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”