RBHS began its annual Courtwarming Week today, which will go to Feb. 27. This year’s theme idea came from student council (StuCo) to be “Versus: A week of Throwdowns.” The morning assembly, which showcases the courtwarming king nominees and various school club performances, will be on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at the beginning of first hour. Rescheduling for the assembly from Thursday to Wednesday occurred because StuCo did not want to take any more class time away from B day classes after all the previous snow days. Tickets to the Courtwarming Dance are $5 and are available for purchase in the Activities office until the end of Thursday. Students can also buy tickets at the door for $5.
Tomorrow, students may vote for one of ten courtwarming king nominees. All finalists are senior boys and will participate in spirit activities during lunch periods along with their escorts. Over the course of the week, money will be collected by StuCo to fundraise for Bruinthon, an event that raises financial and emotional support for patients at the University of Missouri – Columbia Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Grossman is responsible for the crowning of the courtwarming king this year, which will be during halftime of the boys’ basketball game against Helias Catholic High School on Friday Feb. 28.
Planning for the weeklong event started just before winter break. Civics teacher and club sponsor Kelley Wittenborn said the group threw out “big picture ideas” during “idea dumps” for this year’s theme. During that first meeting, members also discussed what they wanted courtwarming to look like and if any major changes would be made from previous years. This year, only the theme and spirit activities underwent changes.
“I really just encourage them always to come up with new ideas, and really the last couple of years our goal is to just be as inclusive as possible,” Wittenborn said. “We want to make the themes accessible to everyone. We don’t want to make anyone look at the theme days and be like, ‘I just don’t really feel like I could dress up for that.’ We want to make it easy and fun [because] the point of [courtwarming] is to get the whole school involved.”
After winter break, Wittenborn said StuCo separated into five smaller committees to “divide and conquer the task.” The five smaller groups were each responsible for dance, publicity, court, the assembly and activities respectively. Senior Mary Kate Grossman is the student body secretary for StuCo and publicity committee chair. Grossman and her group started constructing advertisements during the week leading up to the Courtwarming Dance.
Along with Grossman, junior Peyton Brooks worked to advertise. Brooks said she also met with StuCo president senior Morgan Boussad to plan for the announcements for each of the theme days. Brooks suggested this year’s theme, which was later chosen and passed by StuCo.
“I saw a school do something similar to it, and I thought it looked super fun,” Brooks said. “We had to make sure that all the theme days were appropriate and safe. [For example], we couldn’t do ‘War vs Peace’ because it could be misleading and unsafe, so we decided to do ‘Hero vs Villain’ instead.”
Throughout her experience, Brooks said she really enjoyed the homecoming and courtwarming weeks because of the assemblies, dances and sporting events. She said she thought other students participate in Courtwarming Week because “it’s so much fun to dress up with people and show school spirit.”
“It’s only two weeks out of the year for homecoming and courtwarming,” Brooks said. “I know people are embarrassed to dress up, but it’s [great] whenever people do.”
On top of providing a fun time for students, Brooks and Grossman said the Courtwarming Week is meant to fundraise money and show school spirit. With unique themes for each day, both StuCo representatives said they hope the student body fully embraces the exciting opportunity this week.
“It’s a super fun week that ends up going to charity. All the money that the court raises during the week, as well as all surplus from ticket sales, will go toward Bruinthon this year,” Grossman said. “My favorite part of courtwarming is always seeing the court dressed up [because] they’re all so creative.”
Wittenborn said she and StuCo like the setup of the entire week because “it’s supposed to be a celebration of the whole school.”
“The cool thing about homecoming and courtwarming is even though Student Council kind of organizes it, it really is a joint effort from a lot of clubs and groups around the school,” Wittenborn said. “So for this [year], Cheer and Bruin Girls will both perform, the global village dance will perform, [which] connects to the global village event that’s coming up in March, and then Bruinthon is going to do a feature and jazz band will perform.”
What are you most looking forward to about Courtwarming Week? Let us know in the comments below.
