It’s homecoming time, and we had our fall homecoming rally! Eisenhower is officially back with their first pep rally of the 2025-2026 school year with the theme being Monster Mash Rally with color coordinated class colors–the Seniors wore green for zombies, the Juniors wore red for vampires, sophomores wore white for mummies, and the freshmen wore gray for werewolves. For the seniors, this is their last first pep rally, and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.
The pep rally started off strong with introductions from our fall sports teams, with special shout outs to the seniors as it is their last year playing the sport as well as playing for IKE. Our fall sports teams introduced were boys water polo, cross country, girls volleyball, and lastly football.
Soon after followed introductions to clubs including Cali club, Ballet Flolkórico, and lastly, the Dance Team.
Afterwards, the rally introduced our fifteen Homecoming candidates, starting off with, one candidate for prince and four for princesses then two running for king, and lastly the eight candidates running for Queen.
Once all introductions were completed by our very special ASB President Miranda Torres, and the other announcer, Eric Carillo, followed the usual routine of performances from clubs, beginning with our cheer team who did so well with their stunts as all the energy they gave was excellent and exciting.
Cali Club had their own performance as well, with dance genres ranging from huapango, sinaloense, and banda. The last song played during their special performance was La Bomba by Azul Azul. Everyone part of the club had their dancing partners, all of whom had great, synchronised movements in a quick and slow manner, and by the end, Cali Club created a dance circle that was soon joined in by our Eisenhower Eagle mascots, Edgar and Emma.
Followed by Cali Club’s performance was Ballet Flolkórico, with many performers separated in groups of two wearing different styles of dresses. The Mexican culture they introduced in the fall pep rally was unique with varying color dress choices, with 6 dancers wearing a mix between yellow and black colors, with red lining and hints of flowers while the other 6 dancers wore bright mixed palette with varying dress colors like dark blue, dark green, lime green, and pastel purple. The performers switched between who would dance, with the six women in yellow dresses dancing on each side, then switching with the other 6 performers in vibrant colors for every new song put on. On another note, one of the Flolkórico dancers, Karla, was asked to homecoming dance by her boyfriend with an adorable reference to The Notebook starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, how sweet.
In between each interesting and entertaining performance was games played between sports and clubs—including staff themselves! The first game played was Zombie Brain Toss, where the cheer squad got up in formation to form a basketball like hoop, with two cheerleaders on each side forming a hoop and having two players on each crew–the players included the girls tennis team among other athletes. The challenge was to score as many baskets in 40 seconds as possible to win…felicitations to the girls tennis team who won, what an exciting win for them.
The next game played was a cup relay race against two athletes, where two players need to grab cups one at a time, bringing it up the line or down the line, however they choose, what mattered to win was getting all cups into a box before the other player could. It was an anticipating and anxious watch, that lasted 38 seconds with, at least in the second pep rally–was won by Noah.
The third game to be played was the mummy wrap challenge where coaches or teachers had to be wrapped up quickly in toilet paper to appear as a mummy by the sports teams and clubs playing against each other. The coaches and teachers that were to be rolled up in toilet paper included Mr. Bibian, Ms. Barbie, and lastly Ms.Priscilla all being wrapped up by cross country, ASL, and boys polo as individual teams. The game lasted about a minute long with the student body deciding who won with their cheers–the loudest cheer was for boys water polo–securing and earning their win with the best wrapped mummy.
To a closer ending of the pep rally, the traditional decibel meter challenge between all the grades was played, each class was in a battle to win the loudest singing of finishing the lyrics. The challenge was first given to the Junior’s—2027 graduating class—with the song What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction. With much energy, the Juniors decibel meter was 106 decibels, a number considered to cause great damage to hearing—what a great score! Next, the challenge was given to the Freshmen, who, all new to this, were ready to give it their all with their song choice, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, which clearly motivated them to get an equal decibel meter as the Juniors before them (106 decibels). From then on, the sophomores were next in line to try to beat both class of 2027 and 2029, and clearly, they gave it their all with Katy Perry’s Firework, earning a score of 108 decibels. Now, while every class gave it their all, none was able to compare to either the Seniors choice of song or their decibel score, that being Party in the U.S.A by Miley Cyrus whilst winning the challenge at 114 decibels, what an incredible score!
After such a great win for the Seniors, the second to last performance of the Monster Mash Pep Rally was performed by the dance team, with one of the best performances of all, due to their excellent song selections that show a variety of hip-hop styles with trap being played the most across several of the songs. The songs the dance team performed to included Tyler the Creator’s “Sticky,” JENNIE’s “Like Jennie,” Travis Scott’s “TOPIA TWINS,” Lecrae’s “MOVE,” and lastly, Nicki Minaj’s “Chun-Li.”
Lastly, to end the pep rally on a great note, was an ending performance led by Eisenhower’s Band team, performing The Fight Song, a motivational beat to keep the students excited for homecoming weekend.
