First outdoor pep rally held in three years

Blair held its first outdoor whole-school pep rally in three years today in the stadium to celebrate spring sports teams. The rally concluded with a powderpuff football game, the first one in years.

The event began when a white stretch limo drove across the field. The rally's emerged and then danced to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

After pumping up the crowd and encouraging everyone to show their school spirit, the emcees did a quick shout-out to the winter sports teams, since the winter sports pep rally had been canceled due to February's ice storm.

Each spring sports team was then invited to come to the field to perform a skit or talk about their team, beginning with the gymnastics team, who performed a series of flips, leaps and splits across the field.

The boys' tennis team then brought "Sexy Back" with a cross-dressing and shirt slinging line-up to Justin Timberlake's song.

In a parody of the film "300," the boys' lacrosse team marched onto the field wielding their lacrosse sticks to defend against the monster of the "Persian" forces.

They were followed by the girls' lacrosse team, who launched candy into the stands with their lacrosse sticks. The girls' JV softball team also threw candy into the stands after their dance to "Jump on It." Sandwiched between the flying candy, came the boys' baseball, whose varsity team acted out a mock home run.

Next up was the co-ed volleyball team, who came out to the song "This is Why I'm Hot" by Mims. The boys' volleyball team joined them shortly afterwards, climbing out of two cars that they danced on and around. After senior Tim He ripped off his pants, proclaiming "this is why I'm hot," the teams drove out, piled on the tops of the cars.

The celebration culminated with the girls' varsity softball team, who ran through their line-up and called on the crowd to come to their next game.

Principal Phillip Gainous came onto the field after a short tribute to him from SGA president Eric Hysen. Gainous, who has been principal at Blair for 23 years, is currently being considered for another position with MCPS.

After the hip-hop club performed a rap version of the school fight song, the pep rally closed with a powderpuff football game that pitted senior and junior girls. Male students dressed in skirts cheered from the sidelines. The juniors, dressed in white, got off to an excellent start, scoring in the first half. While the seniors, in red, had a strong showing at the beginning of the second half, they were unable to score and the juniors won, 7-0.

Hysen said he was pleased with the event. "I think it went extremely well," he said. "It's our first pep rally outside since our freshman year. It was our biggest yet, and I think everybody involved did extremely well."