Elliot Roundy Gynasium at Ipswich High School is usually known for its wild basketball games and crazy Tiger Den covered in a sea of orange. However, for those who walked into the gymnasium on Wednesday night, the scene was quite different. Visitors saw about thirty high school students, multiple class advisors, and a lot of construction paper.
What was going on?
This was the night of the “decorating” of the class walls for Spirit Week 2008. Each class was responsible for designing their own theme and assigned to decorate one wall in the Roundy Gymnasium. Whoever put together the most creative, best-looking wall won the Spirit Week points for that event.
Although it wasn’t a tournament basketball game with a last second shot, the gymnasium was equally hectic.
“We only had three hours to set up our wall, and we used every second of it,” said Senior Class President Audrey Shaughnessy. “There was a lot of running around to be done, and no slacking off.”
The senior class, often projected to win, went with the theme of “1990’s and 2000’s.” They turned there wall into a 90’s concert with a stage and all different instruments.
"The Senior's wall was really appealing to us teachers, which is a usual occurance every year." Admired substitute teacher Jim Seeley.
“The hardest part was setting up the stage since we had to carry all these metal pieces up and down the stairs," Shaughnessy. "It got real tiring."
Although the Seniors felt pretty confident that their wall was the best, the Junior class had other plans, according to President Jackson Sabbagh.
“We all thought of our theme together, " Sabbagh said. "We wanted to do something that we knew would catch everybody’s attention.”
As a whole, the junior class turned their wall into the Green Monster, hoping to capture’s everybody’s current Red Sox fever attention.
“The hardest part was figuring out the things that we didn’t have. It took us from 4:00 to 7:15 to finish everything,” said Sabbagh.
Brigning up the read were the Sophomore and Freshmen classes.
The Sophomore class, having been through this before, turned their side of the gym into the “Stairway from heaven with 2011.”
After coming in last place in the wall-decorating last year, the Sophomores wanted to get it right this year.
“It took many weeks to prepare,” said Sophomore Anabelle Berkman.
However, they sophomores were still feeling the affect from freshman year. Berkman also went on to say, “This was very hard to set-up because we didn’t know what to do.”
Finally, the Freshman made their debut in their first ever wall-decorating contest. As rookies, they decided to go with the idea of recycling, or “go green.” Newspaper articles promoting the issue of recycling covered their wall.
“It was a lot of work finding the right articles,” said Freshmen president Morgan Riddle.
But the Freshmen managed and were able to complete their first of four walls in their career.
Wednesday night may not have been anything one expected to see in the Roundy Gymnasium, but it was all good fun and made Spirit Week 2008 just that much more interesting.