Novi and Northville high schools show spirit during rival week

NOVI — The Novi High School Student Council teamed up with the Northville High School Student Congress this year for a competitive series of spirit week events leading up to the big Novi-Northville rivalry basketball games Feb. 3.

“Overall, these games are really big, and a lot of people show up, but also, we’re taking rival week a step further — that it’s not only about athletics, that anybody can really be involved, because it’s school spirit. It’s accessible to everybody. It’s something that everybody can do,” said Novi Student Council representative Sammie Burrell.

The two schools traditionally have spirit weeks, where students dress up in various themed attire to show their school spirit. However, this year was a bit different. The two student governments decided to have the schools take on the same themes for each day and compete to see who could show the most spirit via daily point totals. As part of the competition, the schools sold T-shirts to be worn at the game. The funds from the sales from both schools were to be donated to a local charity.

Burrell said that the idea was proposed by the Northville High School executive board. She said that Novi liked the idea and that the two schools’ student government associations met weekly to discuss different themes for spirit days, talked through ideas and how each student government could make it work. She said they worked together to create polls for spirit days and find what games they could play.

“We just worked hand in hand,” said Burrell. They worked together to figure out “how we could make the week fun at both schools while coming together to support unified games and just overall school spirit.”

Burrell said that there is a lot of hype and excitement around the three basketball games. The schools play boys, unified and girls basketball games. She said the schools were also trying to raise awareness about the unified game.   

According to specialolympics.org, unified sports are “breaking down stereotypes about people with intellectual disabilities in a really fun way” by pairing up people with and without intellectual disabilities on the same team. Unified sports are fairly new to Novi, having been implemented in 2019.   

The two schools counted how many students were participating in each spirit day — each day had a clothing theme, with themes ranging from college day to bikers versus surfers — and tallied up the points. Points were also given for T-shirt sales, blanket-making, as well as attendance during the big games, as well as a point for each basketball game win. Throughout the week, students also had opportunities to participate in games such as cornhole and stack the cup during their lunch hours.

“Obviously, rival week is completely new to Novi, but I feel, compared to homecoming, spirit week, I’ve seen about equal participation,” said Burrell. “I’ve seen a lot of kids having a lot of fun. I’ve seen a lot of participation. A lot of kids are really excited about it.”

“I think overall we had really good participation,” said Makayla Stewart, executive board secretary for the Novi student council. She said she believes the highest participation was on green and white day followed by pajama day.  

According to Burrell, rival week was scheduled during the beginning of the second semester to help relieve student stress and get students to have fun. She said that students often feel a lot of pressure during the beginning of the semester, as there is a lot of change.   

“As a rep of student council for years throughout high school, this is probably one of the most spirited weeks that I’ve seen here, and I’m hoping that this will carry on throughout the week,” said Burrell.

Novi was leading the spirit week competition, but Northville, in part thanks to winning all three basketball games, won the competition.