Spirit Week: DC Vs. Marvel & Tug Of War

by Marissa Kwon January 11, 2016March 11, 2022 552

Day 1: To kick off Spirit Week, senior Brett Watanabe spared no expense in becoming The Flash to help his class earn 100% of the participation points for the DC vs. Marvel Dress Up Day. Photograph by Kylie Yamauchi.

On the first Monday of the third quarter, students walked onto campus dressed as popular characters from the Marvel and DC franchises.

The army of masked crusaders and supervillains was a clear indication to students, their parents, and the surrounding community that Hawaii Baptist Academy’s annual Spirit Week competition was, once again, in full swing.

Working behind the scenes of this activity-packed week is the student council, lead by President Isabel Wiemken and Vice President Judithanne Young. The Council is also responsible for determining this year’s theme (“Cereal Box Smack Down”), organizing daily competitions like Monday’s Tug-of-War and Minute-to-Win-It, and hosting the all-school assemblies in the gym. “[Planning] begins early on. In the beginning of the year, we have to talk about working the themes, what we’re gonna do for this year, and of course a lot of the major planning goes [on as we get closer] to Spirit Week.” Young said.

Wiemken described some of her responsibilities as “mapping out everything from day to day, which games to play, and whether we are going to do points for this or that.” She adds, “I have to communicate with pretty much the every end of the school—middle school as well as high school, class presidents and even class advisors sometimes. [But] I try to leave it up to the class presidents to relay the info to rest of their classes because I don’t want to send emails to over four-hundred plus people.”

On the first day of Spirit Week, Young dressed as the female vigilante Huntress from the DC universe, while Wiemken donned the logo of the iconic Superman. Both put together homemade costumes consisting of various solid color wardrobe essentials and proved that dress up days could be fun and fashionable without a wallet-draining trip to the mall.

For middle and high school students, dressing up is a fun and easy way to score points for their class and showcase their creativity. “I think from our grade, Kacie Kumashiro has some of the best costumes,” added Young. “Totally homemade greatness.”

Freshman class president Rena Takatsuka led her class by example, making sure to dress up according to the themeevery day. “It was fun for me to see everyone’s creative costumes,” she said. “My favorite part of Spirit Week was seeing the costumes when the student council called up the best dressed and seeing my class try their best that week.”