It was out with the old and in with the new this year at Wai`anae High School as they planned for their first after school pep rally. Every year, the school had spirit week right before the homecoming game. Instead, on Thursday, September 29th, the pep rally was held on the football field.

“A pep rally is a spirit activity used to drum up pep and spirit in the school. It’s an event purely to build spirit in the school,” said Janice Uemori, student activities coordinator.

Due to homecoming falling on the last week of school, student government was faced with the task of cramming a week of spirit into one night.

“In order to promote finals week and education we decided to take all the activities and put it in the evening where we were hoping that it wasn't going to interfere with the school day,” Uemori said.

Senior and student union president, Nolan Arasato led the class of 2012 to what they hoped would be there first homecoming skit victory.

“We really want to win because this is our last year, we’re just going to try hard.”

The want to win came with the need to practice.

“We’re practicing really hard. We’ve been having lots of seniors come out to participate and we finally have our skit down packed, I think we’re going to do pretty good this year,” said Arasato.

The seniors’ hard work and practice paid off as they won first place in the pep rally class competition.

“I’m happy, only because seniors won. We finally got to win because we never got to win yet,” said Arasato.

It was the first pep rally and the first win for the class of 2012, but the roots for a lasting tradition have been planted at Waianae High School.

“There will be more pep rallies because the teachers were less stressed out because the kids were more focused on school and families could come and it was at night time so it was cool,” said Arasato.

The new way of celebrating homecoming week is bringing back some old fashioned Waianae spirit.