This football season, a group of students, the Niles West Pack section leaders, came together to create our home game spirit themes. Football season is an exciting time of the year. For freshmen, it’s their first football season ever, and for seniors it’s their last. There is a lot of joy that comes with the games, and the themes are supposed to be exciting and enjoyable. But every year, without a doubt, the themes are boring.

I am a huge fan of themes and dressing accordingly. It is so thrilling getting ready with your friends in outfits that you wouldn’t wear on a regular basis. No disrespect to whoever created these themes, but this year they are disappointing and underwhelming.

For the first home game of the season, we are having a “Beach Night. While it’s a cute and fun idea, it feels overdone. The tropical theme is used over and over again for every spirit wear event. The floral shirts and leis can get repetitive unless paired nicely. Personally, I’m sick of adding a few beads to my braids and crimping my hair to match the concept. The only upside to this theme is that they are bringing in a smoothie stand to go with it.

We have two themes that hold very special meanings, “Go Lime Green” and “Pink Out”. Go Lime Green is in support of mental health, and Pink Out is in support of Breast Cancer. Though I find Lime Green a very ugly color, I am so glad that sports are recognizing mental health as a serious matter. I am definitely biased about Pink Out, because cancer hits close to home, and my favorite color is pink.

For the biggest, most popular game of the season, against Niles North, we have the most boring, over-used and confusing theme of all – Wild West. The problem with the theme is that if Niles West was called anything but West this would be easy, but the theme is stuck between two ideas. Do we show up in cowboy hats and plaid or Niles West gear? Either or, it is very flat. Cowboy Wild West is sometimes cute, but it’s such an exhausted theme and Niles West gear is just too simple.

Best or worst for last? This year seems to follow the latter with our homecoming game being “Adam Sandler” night. This has to be the worst possible theme to pick for homecoming, or really anything. Homecoming is supposed to be a fun night where we get to dress up and the football game theme should reflect that, something exciting. Instead, for our very last home game, they want us to dress in baggy, oversized, mix-matched and sloppy clothes. There is no way to make Adam Sandler outfits cute, the whole point is that they are ugly! If they really wanted to use this theme, they could have used it for our Homecoming spirit week, not the football game. I doubt many people will even try to follow this theme because of how unappealing it is.

These themes are overall disappointing and I was hoping for something more creative and different. Despite how lackluster they are, I hope people still try to follow these themes to represent school unity. Still, it is disappointing that there were so many missed opportunities to have new themes like Iconic Duo, Rhyme Without Reason, Tacky Tourist, Pool Party and so many more that I can only hope are used for next year.