The week of Feb. 2 to Feb. 6 typically marks the beginning of a winter-themed spirit week at Naperville Central. However, this year, Winter Week is being marketed a little differently.
With the removal of the Winter Dance due to low attendance rates, Winter Week has been renamed to Hawks Week, and will promote school spirit as well as introduce Athletic Hall of Fame inductees.
“Even though we don’t have a winter dance this year, [the spirit week is] the same format,” said Sam Szopinski, Central Activities Director. “But [instead], [it] is leading up to the Athletic Hall of Fame Induction.”
As part of Winter Week’s rebrand to Hawks Week, each dress-up spirit day will be named after one letter in “Hawks,” with themes such as A for “Anything but a Backpack” and W for “Western and Wristbands.” On Wednesday, students will be given a wristband when they walk into school to participate in a school-wide rock-paper-scissors competition, giving up their wristband if they lose a match. At the end of the school day, students who believe they have many wristbands are encouraged to head to Student Activities for prizes.
The annual Winter Spirit week would include a school-wide competition and various dance performances leading up to the Winter Dance on that Saturday, comparable to the fall Homecoming assemblies.
Furthermore, for the first time since 2015, all four grades will be in the main gym for a school-wide assembly at the end of the week, Friday Feb. 6. The collective assembly will feature performances from various Central teams and groups such as R4IN, Orchesis, Special Olympics Basketball and Color Guard performing with the Adapted PE classes.
“We were a little nervous; the reason we haven’t been able to [host a school-wide assembly] is because our numbers [were] pretty big, [but] our enrollment has actually dropped over the years,” Szopinski said. “Some kids [also] don’t come to the assembly, [so] we’ve noticed that our assemblies aren’t as packed. So we’re like, you know what? Let’s do it.”
Students will be organized into sections of the Main Gym bleachers as well as other seating areas according to their location in the school and, unlike previous years of Winter and Homecoming assemblies, parents of performers will not be allowed to watch in-person in order to further free up space.
“We did the math, we’re going to fit and it’s going to be awesome,” Szopinski said.
Typically, Central’s varsity cheer team would also perform during Friday’s assembly, but as the team is leaving school early for their sectional competition on Saturday, Feb. 7, they will perform twice at the Monday assembly instead.
Assemblies will take place after seventh hour classes on Monday and Friday. Monday’s assembly will occur twice, split into blocks for the freshman and sophomore classes to participate in competitive games followed by the junior and senior classes.
“Since we don’t have a [specific] theme, we tried to find all of the viral games that a lot of kids have seen on TikTok and bring those in,” said Kristina Hagenbaumer, Physical Education teacher.
Another new event at the assembly agenda is Special Spaces’ Pie-Your-Teacher fundraiser. The fundraiser aims to support the organization’s mission of designing new rooms for child cancer patients. Special Spaces is selling raffle tickets for selected students to pie teacher volunteers during Monday’s assembly. Half will be pied during Assembly A and the other half will be in Assembly B.
“We have our first [room] makeover scheduled for the end of February for a patient,” said Jennifer Simon, Communication Arts teacher and Special Spaces club sponsor. “He’s 10 years old, and he lives in Romeoville, and so we’ve been fundraising all year for that purpose.”
In addition to the new fundraiser, Athletic Hall of Fame inductees will be announced to students during the Monday assembly, similar to the Homecoming court. Following their introduction to students, Athletic Hall of Fame alumni will be participating in an open panel discussion facilitated by Athletic Director Jeff Plackett, answering questions and providing advice for junior and senior varsity student athletes in the Little Theatre during eighth period.
“In comparison to what we’ve done in the past, [this panel] is pretty much the same,” Plackett said. “But we’ve taken this panel that used to be seventh and eighth period, and split it up, so now [the assembly will] be seventh, [and the] panel eighth period. The panel will be a little bit shorter, [but it will still] be an opportunity for our inductees to talk directly to [students].”
Overall, Hawk’s Week will be largely different from previous Winter Weeks, aiming to further strengthen school spirit.
“[A school wide assembly] is something we used to have the ability to do, and for a stretch of time, we [couldn’t] do it that way,” Plackett said. “I think that staff members that have been here for more than 10 years would tell you that the energy is really cool when we get everybody together. That kind of noise of everybody being in the same spot – it’s a lot of fun.”