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As they plan their last rally together in ASB, Mackenzie Huynh (12), Kaya Nepomuceno (12), and Julia Oshiro (12) said they look back on their years of working together bittersweetly but with a sense of completion.
“It is bittersweet but at the same time, I have served my time,” Huynh said. “Even though we’re leaving, we’ve left a good legacy and made an impact on how our program runs. We’re excited to see the new class take [over].”
Huynh, Nepomuceno and Oshiro have taken on central roles in planning Homecoming rallies since last year. Known as the “Rally Trio” in the class, Huynh said that the process of planning rallies made the trio fast friends.
“We all were kind of thrown into [planning rallies],” Huynh said. “We had to work together and try to figure it out. We’re all responsible and creative, so it ended up working out.”
ASB adviser DJ Sosnowski said their differences complement each other and allow them to make an effective team.
“It’s a great trio because they play to each other’s strengths,” Sosnowski said. “I see [them working together] and it’s pretty remarkable.”
Huynh, Nepomuceno, and Oshiro take on different roles when planning rallies due to their different strengths.
“[Oshiro] is really good at the logistical aspect of the rally,” Huynh said. “She’s really good at little aspects, like time and flow, so she usually handles the script and the whole [plan] collectively.”
On the other hand, Nepomuceno tends to focus on technical details, including the uses of props.
“[Nepomuceno] does the construction and brings the physical elements to life,” Huynh said. “Like this morning, in this game we’re using, she [came up with using] cones and a jump rope [to make it work].”
Huynh said she’s the one coming up with the majority of the ideas.
“[Huynh]’s a creative mind,” Nepomuceno said.
Oshiro said that Huynh tends to show this creativity through coming up with ideas for games at the rally and tying those games to the rally’s theme.
This year, the trio had the idea to reduce materials discarded after one use by reusing existing materials. Sosnowski directed Huynh, Nepomuceno and Oshiro toward the cafeteria.
“We’ve partnered with the cafeteria to take empty boxes and turn some of those boxes into decorations or utilize them for games in the Hoco rally,” Huynh said.
Oshiro said that planning the rally comes with its fair share of stress and pressure, but is worth the sense of accomplishment in the end when the committee successfully puts together the whole production.
“There are always things that go wrong, you have to figure out how to fix it, and [I experience] a lot of sleep deprivation,” Oshiro said. “But it’s always still really fun and at the end, we can all be like, ‘we made this all happen,’ and everyone had a really good time.”
Oshiro, Huynh and Nepomuceno plan to pass the torch as leaders in the rally committee after the trio leaves ASB. Oshiro said that while there is uncertainty in this process, she trusts that this tradition will be done justice by upcoming committee leaders.
“We’re excited to see what new ideas they [underclassmen] come up with when they take over,” Oshiro said. “Right now, Carly Isleta [11] has been working with us on the Homecoming rally and I’m hoping to have her be in charge on the day of, so she gets a feel for it before she has to do the whole winter rally without us.”
Sosnowski said that since most seniors have been in ASB since their freshman year, passing their roles down is a significant undertaking.
“I think a lot of the seniors in ASB take pride in the fact that they’ve done it for a while,” Sosnowski said. “There’s a real sense of ownership that they’ve been through [in] this program.”
Since the class of 2024 began high school online, Oshiro said that the rally committee includes games where the whole class section can participate in order to focus on a sense of community.
“That’s a big reason why we really like ‘Finish the Lyric,’” she said. “We also try to have one more thing on top of that. ‘Grab and Go,’ where we call out ‘find an ID’ or something and then [each class] throws one down, is one that we’ve been doing a lot just because people seem to really like it. It’s a really nice way to have the opportunity to make everyone feel included.”
