We sort of had one just today. Our baseball and softball teams both of big playoff games this weekend, so we had a “send-off”. The cheerleaders cheered and the drummers, drummed. Great fun was had by all.
In the fall, we have five pep-rallies during the football season. In an attempt at some sort of parity, the volleyball team is introduced, too. However, it is the football boys who are the real stars. The cheerleaders cheer, the band plays, the dance team shakes their booties and boobies, there is usually some sort of skit or silly game, then the whole shebang is over. The whole thing takes place in the gym during the last class of the day. Our pep rallies take about twenty minutes, usually.
During the week of homecoming, we’ll have an additional “Community Pep Rally” on Wednesday evening. The public is invited (though rarely attends). Same sort of stuff as the usual pep rallies, only this one is under the stadium lights. The girl athletes have a torch run through the town and light a flame at the stadium. The seniors all gather on the field after the festivities. Tears are shed. Teens love to be dramatic.
Both where I am now and where I went to high school pep assemblies and pep rallies are two similar but different events. Pep assemblies take place during school hours and students are called to the gym. Pep rallies are after school, outside, and only for “big games” (homecoming and game against the arch-rival school.)
In early 00’s… we always had around 5-6 scheduled throughout the year, and usually ended up doing the first one, then the rest were either cancelled, forgotten about by the entirety of the student body and staff, or involved half the students just going home early when they realized nothing was stopping them and no one cared.
Yeah…they were one of those boring HS “events” that nobody wanted to attend. I attended a small HS with mediocre sports teams…game attendence was typically low. But why twist arms and make people attend? Its like mandatory chapel sessions at church-affiliated colleges-if you make people attend, the results are usually the opposite of what was intended.
Ditto, except swap rural Pennsylvania for rural Michigan. I hated them. I almost got in trouble for skipping one when I was caught hiding in the library. I didn’t get punished because, in the words of the teacher that caught me, “writing this up would be ridiculous”. She did tell me not to do it again though.
Seating was always according to grade, and maybe twice a year we’d have “spirit games” where volunteers from each class were supposed to compete against the other classes while the rest of the study body watched (these took an entire afternoon). My class was must’ve been unusually lacking in school spirit since we always lost. We were also the only class to ever have to forfeit an event because not enough people wanted to do it (cue exasperated class advisors begging their students to sign up for crap).
We certainly had pep rallies in Texas in high school and even junior high school. Very common. Almost every week during football season – and always for football, never for any other sports teams. That was, however, several decades ago and I don’t know about now. (I’ve since learned that my junior high school has been redesignated a “middle school.”)
When I went to high school (late '80s), my school had these things, but IIRC they were called “assemblies.” There were a few each year, but I don’t remember if they were specifically tied to sports, since I stopped attending them after the first couple my freshman year. They had them in the middle of the day, so my friends and I looked at them as an hour off to go screw around somewhere.
The school always said these assemblies were mandatory. I used to wonder about that… my school had a student population of about 4500, and while the gym was huge, if the administration thought we could all fit in there they were dreaming.
We had pep rallies when I went to school, mid 2000s, DC area. I don’t think they had to do with sports though as they seemed kind of random and they weren’t consistent from year to year.
We couldn’t skip though as the perimeter of the school was on lock down during these. The only event my friends and I managed to escape was our senior picnic.
Now that I think of it, a few may have been for basketball. Maybe. But football, ahead of every game.
We had “assemblies” too but those were different. Assemblies always had some other purpose. Such as to listen to some guy who had been in prison for drugs and now went around to schools telling students not to do drugs. Or maybe to watch the school play. But pep rallies were a very unique animal.
