As part of the PALS program, students work year round with the life skills kids on all of the district’s campuses. Part of this involves getting to go to the various bowling, basketball, and track Special Olympic events. Along with this, PALS leave the high school campus and visit Lovejoy and Hart Elementary School and Sloan Creek Intermediate School Tuesday through Thursday.

“Working and gaining relationship with these kids so closely for the past two years has been the most memorable part of my high school experience,” senior PAL Maddie Pool said. “I will miss seeing and hanging out with them on a regular basis, being a PAL will be the number one thing I will miss from high school.”

Now on Monday for the first time, the PALS class will help host a school wide pep rally planned and dedicated solely to these Special Olympic athletes.

“Ms. Lyles had a meeting with Mr. Mayfield which kind of sparked the idea and once she told us, (the PALS) we all fed off of it and thought of how we could make it awesome,” senior PAL Greg Watson said.

The PALS have arranged for “jog-jam” songs to be played in-between classes leading up to the 5th period pep rally. The PALS have created a theme of “team sport day” influencing people to wear their favorite teams jerseys or shirts in order to celebrate these athletes.

“We have wanted to do music in-between passing period for a while now and it just took us talking with Mr. Mayfield to make it happen, we are super excited for it and hope it gets people pumped up for a really cool pep rally,” Watson said. “The more students buy into it the better it will be and there’s no one that deserves it more than these athletes.”

The pep rally will be held Monday because the athletes will compete in their last Special Olympics on Wednesday.

“This is a group of athletes just like any other on campus so we wanted to throw a pep rally in their honor, celebrating all of their competition and motivating them for their last one,” senior PAL Keirsten Lindelof said. “Special olympic athletes from Lovejoy, Hart, Puster, Sloan Creek, Willow Springs, and Lovejoy High School have all been invited to come get recognized and we are hoping that they all get to come.”