On Friday, February 11, 2016 the annual Westwood Jr./Sr. High School hall decorating contest took place across all grades. This year’s theme was video games.

Each class had a different video game: the eighth graders had Sonic, the freshmen had Space Invaders, the sophomores had Pokemon, the juniors had MarioKart, and the seniors had Pacman. Both the junior and sophomore hallways were decorated on the second floor. The eighth grade, freshman and seniors were on the bottom floor.

After school on Thursday, each class prepared their designated wings. Each class was able to reach out to their fellow classmates in their grade to help them decorate the hallway. They were also allowed to prepare decorations beforehand. Most of the materials each class used were construction paper, and streamers. The freshman, sophomores and juniors also used yarn to hang things from the ceiling.

The 2016 winning hallway was the junior wing, the MarioKart wing. Class president Christian Guma said, “Yes, I’m very proud” regarding the junior class win. The juniors began basic preparations a week in advance; they sketched out a plan, painted gold coins and gathered supplies. Regarding their theme: “[it] was also something very popular that old and new generations would know and appreciate,” said junior Vice President Alex Pirola. Pirola believes it is a widely-known video game by all ages.

The juniors brought in a Barbie Jeep in addition to a projector. Junior advisor Danielle Sommerville was very enthusiastic and helpful when decorating the hallway, according to Guma. The Junior Class Officers felt that the seniors were the biggest competition because they are the graduating class. They also felt that the sophomores posed a threat.

The sophomores came in second place.  It took them about five hours to decorate their hallway with the help of some of their friends and classmates. The sophomores also prepared beforehand; they painted pokeballs, photoshopped the teachers into the pokemon cards and created captions for them. Sophomore class president Eric Kopp believes the juniors will always be their biggest competitor. “The juniors had a pretty good hallway, especially with the projector,” said Kopp.

The senior hallway was themed Pac Man and received third place. It took the senior class about four and a half hours to decorate their hallway and were assisted by their class advisers, Liz Farrell and Eileen Nagle.  Nagle said, “I think it’s hard with seniors because people are so involved and they don’t always necessarily make time for school involvement stuff.” Nagle believes that if they had more manpower, it would’ve been easier to complete more work in such a short time, but is proud of the work the seniors put into their hallway.