![Wayland Historical Society Executive Director Scarlett Hoey explains the history of the Cochituate Gatehouse.
"The exterior is still a nice monument to remember buildings [involved in] water history," Hoey said. "We all drink lots of water, and it's such an important resource that we kind of take for granted nowadays."](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IMG_2024-1200x800.jpg)
On Wednesday, Nov. 26, Wayland High School students celebrated the annual spirit day before Thanksgiving break began. Preparation and planning was done by the WHS Student Council, starting right after homecoming until the day arrived.
At the start of the day, students met with their advisories and then travelled to other classrooms to compete with other grades, playing games, such as trivia and Pictionary.
Along with the advisory games, each grade gathered together to play “Guess that song” and “Coke and Pepsi” with their classmates.
Following the advisories individual schedules, the pep rally began, starting with performances from the WHS Pep Band and cheerleading team. The cheerleaders’ routine included the senior football players. Over the past couple weeks, the cheerleaders and senior football players have been practicing routines and stunts after school to get ready for the pep rally.
After those performances, four students were selected from each grade to participate in the relay race. This race consisted of putting your head on a bat and spinning around. Then participants would then “wheelbarrow” their teammate across the basketball court. After they raced across the court, they grabbed scooters and scooted their way back to the start. This year, the seniors won the relay.
After the relay, musical chairs took place. Three students were selected from each grade to participate.
“This year, we added having to find an add item to win musical chairs,” sophomore Izzy Irwin said.
Irwin discussed potentially adding more restrictions for next year’s game of musical chairs due to speculation of some grades unfairly losing points.
After musical chairs, students played tug-of-war against other grades. The freshman went against the seniors, and then the juniors went against the sophomores.
Differently from past years, where all members of the grades were allowed to participate, only certain students were selected. Each grade was only allowed a specific number of students on the rope at a time.
The seniors beat the freshman, and the juniors beat the sophomores in tug-of-war. Then, the senior and juniors faced off, with the seniors being the final winners.
“I think the pep rally was really, really fun, and the whole day was a great day for everyone to have,” Irwin said.
According to sophomore class president Vik Chaudhry, spirit week brought the school together.
“I was honestly super, super happy with spirit week as a whole,” Chaudhry said. “It’s a really good time to wind down before the break, but every moment was exhilarating. From the Color Blast to the rally at the end, it was super fun, and it was great to meet [people] from other grades and watch our class come together.”
Despite the sophomores placing second, Chaudhry stated his content with the results.
“I’m super happy with our class’s result, which was second place for spirit week,” Chaudhry said. “We had a lot of volunteers and people to help for almost every activity, which is what we look for during these events.”’
