Chewy Baumel ’13, Sports Editor

When asked their favorite event at Newark Academy, many students point to Spirit Week or Homecoming. The two are certainly intertwined as Spirit Week is meant to promote Minuteman spirit within school, which then hopefully carries over to sporting fields held on Homecoming Day the following Saturday.

Each day during spirit week is marked with a particular dress up theme, but also highly heralded sporting events where each grade competes against one another in a different event. Each event counted for 100 points, which is awarded to the winning grade and were then tallied in addition to dress up points, skit and decorations to decide the winner of Spirit Week.

This year’s sporting events were Dodgeball, Tug O’ War, Freeze the T-Shirt, Knock Out and, the always-entertaining Ping Pong Tournament. To ensure fair-play and safety within the competition, many changes were made to this fall’s Spirit Week sporting events. For instance, the dodgeball game did not impose a limit on the number of participants from each grade. This not only made it difficult for judges to determine eliminations, but it also resulted in a hugh number of game-related injuries. The student council voted to change the rules including, establishing a limit of 30 people per grade, all of whom had to wear pinnies. This change made for a smoother game. It also added a new need to strategize and have more effective and productive players represent their grades. This year the Juniors were victorious.

Often, these sporting events had been overlooked as meager grade competitions. But as seen this year, the competitions were very intense.  Case and point: echoes of supporting fans could be heard all over the NA halls when the Freshman pulled off a surprising upset over the Juniors in dodgeball, or when the Seniors won the first ever Freeze the T-Shirt competition, a new Spirit Week contest whereby 4 participants from each grade had to pry open a frozen T-shirt and put it on in as little time as possible.

Freshman Myles Schalet was victorious in the Ping Pong competition in which he defeated junior Nathaniel Okun in the finals.  NA spirit was front and center during this match played in front of the entire school –many signs could be spotted in the crowd, as well as the freshman and junior “support squad” on stage ready to hand off a water bottle or towel to the participants. Overall, these sporting events throughout Spirit Week were a fun time for NA students to showcase their athleticism and skills in some unusual events that are not always spotlighted on the sports fields.

Spirit Week concluded on Friday with a raucous and entertaining Pep Rally where the community enjoyed dance performances and listened to each fall athletic team give season updates. At the end of the Rally, the Student Council announced the winner of Spirit Week. This year the “Juniors of Oz” were crowned Spirit Week champs. But next day, Homecoming Day, the school was no longer divided into grade competitions.

Homecoming represents a day of unity among the NA community, as all come out to support the Fall athletics teams competing on Saturday, October 15^th. With games occurring all over the NA campus, fans flew enthusiastically from one field to the next beginning at 10 AM. Bright and early, the Mens soccer team dueled to a 0-0 tie followed by the Field Hockey team’s 3-0 win. For the 2 and 2:30 PM starts, the women’s soccer team won a nail-biter against Princeton Day School with a score of 2-1 and then the Football team honored their Seniors on Senior Day against our rivals, MKA, in hard-fought battle that unfortunately ended in defeat. The homecoming day record for NA teams was a winning one of 2-1-1.

Harry Mcarthy ’13 and Joe DeNoon ’13 donned Minutemen costumes, exhibiting an abundance of NA school spirit on Homecoming Day. The athletes on all different fields played their sports with NA pride. These athletes worked as a team knowing that they were not playing for themselves, but for the Minutemen name emblazened across their respective uniforms. The principles that are instilled in this school and pride in which all NA student athletes conduct themselves. We are Minutemen, and sure are proud of it!