By Abby Hendrickson

The students rushing to their classes, in a panicked race with the late bell, slowed as they abruptly turned into the lower 900 hall. Its ceiling was transformed into twinkling strings of bright pink, red, and white hearts that proudly displayed each name of every sophomore at PA. 

The Class of 2022 officers worked together to create these decorations for the week of Love Run. Sophomore class president Zoe Davis said, “We wanted to give back to Class of 2022 and remind everyone that we were our own community/family kind of thing.”

Three weeks ago, the school was full of spirit days and decorations in preparation for the annual charity event: Love Run. This event involves a race and speakers who highlight the drastic impact the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) has had on the community. 

According to SCA publicist Ally Palalay, the publicity for this major event was no simple task as the responsibilities were divided between her and an entirely separate committee for Love Run. “My sister, Livi Palalay, was in charge of publicizing for Love Run as the duties of the Love Run committee were separate from SCA’s responsibilities. My job was to promote Love Run and Love Run spirit week through the SCA [social media] accounts, rather than the Love run committee which mainly did stuff like searching for sponsorships and looking for people to come to the actual event,” said Palalay. 

Given that there was no school Monday, there were four spirit days that week that all were related to love. They were, I love college, I love my bed, I love decades, and lastly, I love PA. Before any large-scale school event, there is usually a spirit week leading up to it.

“Something we wanted to work on is making spirit days because PA is very spirited, but we do recognize that there are some parts of the schools who do not dress up, so something we wanted to do is to make spirit days easier to dress up for. I think this past spirit week really targeted that,” said SCA President Francisco Perez. 

Palalay commented on the importance of spirit weeks saying, “I think it definitely gets the people excited for events. The purpose of spirit weeks is to gain that spirit for the school and kind of unite the school in a way. So, with the spirit weeks leading

up to love run, it kind of prepares everyone to build up that spirit so that at the end of the week they can show their spirit at the event they are putting on.”

The Love Run committee along with SCA’s publicity team worked tirelessly to decorate the entire school. The result of their efforts was a heavy presence of decorations and posters in seemingly every hall of the school.

“I definitely wish there was more compared to last year. I know we were running low on time because I was one of the committee members, and our poster paloozas [days for making posters] weren’t as packed,” said Davis, who was also a committee member for Love Run. “We did get all of the needed posters, but I do wish there was more because I remember last year there was door decorating and I absolutely loved those…I thought they were so cute. I really felt it last time. I know this year I definitely didn’t feel like it was Valentine’s Day or ‘I love’ week in general. It kind of just went by so fast. I definitely wished there had been more, but I do think it was still effective.”