The Wildest Cats recently kicked off the trimester with their first event, a Harvest Festival, and it was a huge success.

The Harvest Festival is one of the major events the Wildest Cats conduct throughout the year. Other events the Wildest Cats will plan out this year include the Halloween dance and the Holiday dance.

Sarah Kimmel ’20, one of the co-leaders of the Wildest Cats, is talking to Erin Davey, Director of Inclusion and Community Life, about conducting a Black Light Dance, with other schools invited, where the theme is white and neon. The glow in the dark concept will also help raise money for charity.

Davey, in an email, outlined exactly how the Wildest Cats, which began in 2014, keeps school spirits soaring.

“The Wildest Cats not only get people excited for upcoming events, they help plan, execute, set up, and clean up each event,” said Davey. “Nearly everything we do is an idea generated from a Wildest Cat. The spirit of a school lives within the buy-in of its community members, and the Wildest Cats have done an amazing job setting the standard for high-level, authentic school spirit.”

The Wildest Cats have also has been collaborating with the Student Council to have a Willympics-type event every trimester. These events, the Student Council and the Wildest Cats believe, will help the students get more hyped up and get the community together more often. There are ideas about incorporating the events into the Holiday festival for winter trimester and into Willy Gras for the spring trimester.

Sarah and Gabe Liu ’20 mentioned that the main job for them, as Wildest Cats leaders, is to get people hyped up. To start that process, first they must get organized. They meet on Mondays to discuss and fill in the gaps where there are activities that should be planned out for the coming week.

“Davey normally comes in with a bunch of ideas, which is awesome,” Sarah said. “But every Monday we go through and plan the whole weekend activities and get people to help us set up, clean up.” Sarah and Gabe both emphasized that big events, like Homecoming, have to be planned out as far back as summer.

Sarah said she would love if everyone tried to make it to all the spirit events and the games because the underclassmen look up to the upperclassmen for spirit.

Both Gabe and Sarah are quick to point out it’s a team effort, and the more help the better; to that end they said they’re always welcome to new ideas.

“The only way to make events fun is really to host activities that the students want to participate in,” Gabe said, “so our main focus should probably just be listening to the students and trying our best to get everyone involved.”

Gabe also thanked the students for their input and ideas.

“I think students this year have been a lot more vocal about what activities they want and prefer,” he said. “A lot more people have even been suggesting new ideas and trying to make sure this a great year.”

Gabe said club leaders have been “really active in trying to coordinate different events for their respective clubs.”