Upper St. Clair helps students assimilate with Freshman Field Day
Students participate in a sack race.
Students participate in a tug of war.
With Halloween on the horizon, some students dressed in costumes for Freshman Field Day.
For anyone who’s had the experience, Eric Lehman summed it up well:
“It can be scary coming to a new school.”
The Upper St. Clair High School senior was among the upperclassmen who helped reduce the fear factor for this year’s ninth-graders through the annual Freshman Field Day.
“The goal is to kind of make the environment a little more cohesive, a little more inviting for everyone, so you don’t have this hierarchy in the building,” guidance counselor Thomas Marquis explained. “Everyone is kind of on the same page and the same level.
On a chilly but sunny Friday morning, 350-plus students gathered at the school stadium to participate in a series of picnic-type activities, from the traditional sack race and tug of war to more creative pursuits like playing dodgeball while blindfolded.
The freshmen participated by homeroom, with junior mentors serving as coaches, cheerleaders and supporters. Five seniors who were mentors last year organized the logistics for the various activities.
“As a freshman, I looked up to a junior who was very popular, very outgoing, and I looked to him as a role model and to what I wanted to be when I was a junior,” Lehman said. “To pay it back once I’m a junior after being a freshman is just the greatest feeling.”
Stephen Cuddy, another senior, described his experience as a junior mentor.
“They were 20 kids whom I’d never met and never would have met without this program, and now they’re 20 kids I can saw I know,” he said. “There were a couple of students I really got through to and really needed my help, and I was able to deliver. To see that my help actually meant something to them was wonderful.”
Allie Ryave spoke about her Freshman Field Day experience during her first year at the school.
“It really marked the transition of my being comfortable at the high school and feeling like a Panther, like I belonged,” she said.
Regarding this year’s freshmen, senior Megan Kramer noted the progress they have made in the past month and a half.
“It’s great to see how comfortable they are now,” she said. “The first couple of days of high school are so awkward. And now they’re all comfortable in their homerooms, and you can tell they like this environment.”
The environment for this year’s Freshman Field Day was augmented by a clear blue sky.
“One year, we got rained out, and we had to have the whole thing in the gym, which was interesting,” Marquis recalled.
To Ryave, though, the atmospheric conditions really didn’t matter.
“It could be raining. It could be an earthquake. Field Day was still go on,” she said. “We love this so much.”