The Spirit: What a group of girls taught me about unity

For the past five years of high school I've looked forward to events that allowed me to sing and shout and dance around showing pride for my school. It's this immense feeling of unity and sisterhood that overwhelms me. I am not a sporty girl at all, but I am a passionate supporter. 

Today was our last Inter-House Sports Day. The end of 12 years of galas and athletics and fun events that got me dressed up in house colours and cheering for my side. Something happened today that shattered every preconception I've had about the power of unity and the pride I have for my school( and actually the future, now that I really think of it) has grown exponentially. You see, there are four houses that we are divided into - Red, Blue, Green, Yellow. ( I've chosen to leave out the house names and just stick with our colour). Now in the past, there was fierce rivalry between everyone for the Spirit Cup.

Highly coveted and what is the best award because it didn't depend on who was fastest but rather who had the most passion for their team. So about 20 minutes into the singing and shouting, Red and Green decided to merge to form one HUGE house that sang and clapped for everyone. Soon it meshed in with Yellow and the atmosphere became filled with the buzz of excited girls who sang together. Now everyone wanted it to move further, have Blue join. But the request was spurned and the festivities continued. Races were ran and Pom-poms were fluttering in the warm air. 

For the first time in the schools history, houses joined together to celebrate our school. To show the strength of all our voices combined, or at least most of our voices. The voice over the mic requested everyone to sing the school song but we sadly noted that Blue refused to join in with everyone else. So they sang after RYG finished, but everyone else joined in. Because a lot of us realised it wasn't about winning anything or losing but about celebrating and having healthy competition yet still cheering each other on. 

The reason this bizarre event gives me hope is because in that crowd of 700 or so girls, may be a future leader. Your future decision-makers or voters or just a huge amount of potential. For the most part, everyone didn't care about who won, we screamed in joy and pride that this was the potential. In a previous post I expressed fear that this generation of young people needed to learn that it's ok to be proud of each others victory. And today, those fears were squashed. I saw 13 year old girls who were initially too shy to even sing along that eventually ended up jumping around with their peers.

Inter-House Day became INTEGRATED. It wasn't Segregated House day, but something magical( to me at least) that took a bunch of girls who usually cannot even unite to sing during assembly and changed that same bunch into a cheering force. I truly feel honored that I was privileged to be a part if that today. For the moments that it lasted , it etched itself into my memory. It wasn't the day this house lost or won but rather the day we all (well most of us) came together. To the few members of Blue who snuck over to join us and were later reprimanded- You made me smile because you chose what you knew to be better.

However the best of things cannot last and even though it was proposed to award the Spirit Cup to the ENTIRE school for showing tremendous spirit, it was vetoed by Blue. At the end of the day, it seemed that they insisted on a winner because sharing the victory that the entire day was, was not good enough. The houses were told to divide back and each one gave their all, although heartsore that  we had to part ways. Blue won (as they are accustomed to) and no one begrudged them for their victory. They won and it was what they do as Blue. But Red, Green and Yellow celebrated louder afterwards - For them the victory was in finding pride for each other. From the quietest to the loudest, the fast and slow- we sang one last time to remember something that never happened before and was unlikely to happen again.

You cannot conquer while divided because in being together you find so much more strength and joy. 

I'm proud of you LeVauStone. You made my last Inter-House Athletics day into a memory I will cherish because it taught me that the greatest pride can come from something other than victory - Togetherness.