Pumafest, a tradition at UPrep, allows students to watch games and support their friends. However, the results of a survey show that 33.3% of students agree that Pumafest’s popularity has gone down since previous years, and 45.2% are unsure.
According to seventh grader Helen Joneschild, Pumafest doesn’t greatly impact the amount of people who go to games.
“A couple more people will go to watch their friends,” Joneschild said. “Maybe some people who wouldn’t regularly go to a game go… I don’t really think that really happens very much.”
However, students have mixed opinions. Eighth grader Isla Weber enjoys going to Pumafest and how it encourages school spirit at games.
“I appreciate the way that it gets people to watch other people’s games because sometimes it feels like you’re just sort of playing in your gym, but there’s not a lot of school spirit,” Weber said.
Like Joneschild, seventh grader Hannah Falck thinks students aren’t going to Pumafest to support their friends or show school spirit.
“People are more interested in getting class points instead of school spirit,” Falck said. “They don’t really stay that much.”
Yet seventh grader Laksh Sandhu thinks more students are going.
“More students are going now that there’s more people in the middle school,” Sandhu said. “I don’t feel like Pumafest is failing by the number of students that go to it.”
On the other hand, Joneschild thinks the goal of bringing people together hasn’t been achieved, and said that Pumafest isn’t necessary.
“Sometimes it just doesn’t really work,” Joneshchild said. “There isn’t a large influx in attendance.”
Weber thinks that if more people know about it, more people will go. She also suggests ways we could make that happen.
“Maybe having some cheer captain… more posters around, get people more aware and get people excited,” Weber said. “The people on the team could do spirit days, like they do in upper School, where they might dress all as cowboys on their game day.”