The SpiriThon club raises funds within the school community, contributing toward the University of Connecticut’s (UConn) final HuskyTHON total. Students and teachers facilitated smaller fundraisers all throughout the year leading up to their February celebration. This year, the club raised 15, 146 dollars, the highest in the school’s SpiriThon history.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of the Omicron variant earlier this winter, this year’s SpiriThon event was moved to a virtual model.

“There were a lot of meetings before and after school, and during hawks’ nests in order to organize the event. Each of the board members were assigned a committee to head. We had to connect with our committee members and work with them to get the work done by certain deadlines,” Community Outreach and Fundraising Committee chair Gabby Gorman said.

With a 10,000 dollars goal set for this year, SpiriThon raised 15,146 dollars, which was calculated at the end of their event but will continue to increase as the event remains open. SpiriThon did not only face an obstacle from the pandemic, but from the weather as well. When the original scheduled date of Friday, February 8 was a canceled school day due to weather, the Executive Board
worked with administration to quickly and efficiently reschedule the event. The major SpiriThon event was moved to Wednesday, February 16.

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Spin for SpiriThon -- Adviser Patrick Skerker spins the wheel to determine one of the raffle winners. Throughout the night there were four raffles with prizes from Highland Park Market, Wood & Tap, and J. Timothy’s.

“There has been way more (community involvement) than we were expecting. We’ve had so many teachers that were willing to donate snacks for goodie bags, to the T-shirts, and just in general. And the students are getting into it. The students who are into it, are into it. It’s awesome,” advisor Sadie Robinson said.

The SpiriThon Executive Board made and distributed goody bags before the event. The candy and snacks for the goody bags were donated by faculty and staff and the bags were a reward for raising at least 50 dollars. The team organized and handed out each bag to eligible participants during the school day.

“Mostly the conversations between fellow advisors and student leaders is how can we make it just as fun, engaging, and meaningful as possible in a two hour period of time while people are at home virtually,” Robinson said.

At the virtual event, there was a detailed schedule. The Executive Board was allowed to meet in the library to run the event and supervised raffles, games of Bingo or trivia, and videos provided by UConn’s HuskyTHON program. The music department provided recordings of songs from choir and instrumental groups. The event concluded with the top fundraisers receiving gifts donated by local sponsors.