On the morning of February 10th, NASH homerooms were oddly silent, student eyes glued to the morning announcements broadcast onscreen. Classes eagerly followed the rhythmic roll of a spinner and intently searched through the subsequent numbers. Whole School Bingo week had begun, and hundreds of NASH students had their hearts set on winning.
The incredibly popular tradition of Whole School Bingo at NASH began three years ago, and its inspiration came from somewhere unexpected–an elementary school.
“I was looking at student activity directors across the country, and somebody had posted something about an elementary school student council doing Bingo,” NASH Stuco sponsor Justin Karolski explained. “We were looking for something to be more joyful and bring school spirit into February–it’s just such a dreary month. So I thought, Why don’t we just try it? Everyone loves Bingo.”
Since its start and success, the program has been headed by the Spirit Committee Cabinet Heads and the Student Council Spirit Officer, this year senior Anna Fiffik.
“They’ll work on finding prizes and reaching out to businesses to donate gift cards,” Karolski explained. “All the gift card prizes are donated. This year we have Chick-Fil-A, DiBellas, McDonalds, Fun Slides, and some more. Spirit Committee gets a list, and then calls everyone they can think of that students would be interested in.”
All of the prizes are selected by the Spirit Committee as well through a combination of previous years’ prize lists, popular lists on Amazon, and an evaluation on what’s trending in NASH’s student body.
“[Students on the committee] saw the Stanley cups from last year and said, ‘Oh, Owalas are way better,’” Karolski stated. “Part of it is just evaluating what’s popular each year–but some stuff, like candy bars, are always popular, so those are never gonna go away.”
While Bingo may seem trivial, the Spirit Committee’s efforts throughout this week are part of a much larger movement to improve student morale in the hardest months of the year.
“One of the goals of the spirit committee is to find times in the year where there is not school spirit, to fill up periods where students are dreading coming to school,” Karolski said. “We want to fill it with something to make their days a little bit brighter–anything we can do to boost kids a little bit is really the goal, it gets people dreading going outside a little bit less.”
Though there is an immense amount of effort put into selecting great prizes–and many of the early winners enjoyed gift cards, water battles, speakers, and more–the spirit comes from participation rather than just the reward.
“What’s really fun is that while we’ll have a few winners on Monday and Tuesday–we had four winners on Tuesday–the people who win on Thursday and Friday are running down there and they’re getting a bouncy ball or maybe a chocolate bar or just a small tootsie roll, but they’re so excited,” Karolski stated. “It’s the fun of playing along and winning, not something to do with the prizes themselves.”
Tyler Davis, a senior who was among the earliest winners of Whole School Bingo this year, expressed his own excitement.
“This was my first time winning and I didn’t expect to get a Bingo so soon,” Davis stated. “I chose a jacket because it can be used more than once.”
Later winners shared similar sentiments.
“I was so excited to win this year. I won on Thursday and the prizes were surprisingly good,” said senior Linda Kong.
With the joy it brings to the dreariest time of year, there’s no end in sight for Whole School Bingo at NASH.
“With the success we’ve seen, we’ll probably do this for years to come,” Karolski stated. “When we started the first year, I remember someone saying that students in this school were way too old for Bingo, and we’ve definitely proven them wrong three years in a row.”
