Homecoming 2017 may be history now, but hopefully the spirit that came with it will stick around. The week before the big game brought five days of spirit and fresh energy mixed up the otherwise monotonous school days. Students can support the school and wear hats.

This year saw packed hallways filled with tacky tourists, fashionable sock-filled sandal wearers, and teacher-student swapped outfits. The week culminated in the traditional color war day. This year, each student received a shirt in their grade’s color. Previous administration never did this before, but the effects were clearly seen at the assembly.  The highlight from sophomore Zack Shaw was “supporting your class.”

Locker bays were decked out, too, with themes created from the grades’ representatives. Jillian Johnson, a senior, believes the locker bay themes were “creative, and some of them have better artists.” Her idea is to “spread out the artists, not just define them by the classes. Junior hall is fantastic, and the sophomore hall is decent.” Distributing the artists may take away from the class unity, but it would make each locker bay even more beautiful.

So after such a successful spirit week, now the question is how to make sure the next one is even better. If the focus of the spirit week changed from the school to community more people would participate. CHS science teacher Cory Marshall believes the “best thing we do is Stuff the Bus. We can serve the community.” He believes even the students “who don’t get into the school spirit week can appreciate and get into serving the community.”  While a week focusing on school spirit prepares the team for the final league football home game, finding a way to entwine school spirit and community building would impact the whole Camas community positively. Taija Souki, a student at CHS, agrees, “It would be good to bring more participation in and bring awareness to the needs of Camas’ community.”

So as students and staff look ahead to the future spirit weeks of the 2017-2018 school year, adding another community-focused layer to the fun could be just the ticket to stoke the spirit at CHS.