Radnor High students stage elaborate pep rally on their own

Brian Garber has a checklist a mile long.

Balloons are ready to drop, confetti cannons are poised to fire, and a handful of teenage dancers are all choreographed and ready to stand and shake their stuff in one of Radnor High School's most anticipated events of the year.

If all that weren't complex enough, a contract dispute between the school's teachers and its board has left Garber and a group of students all by their lonesome Friday for this year's annual pep rally for Saturday's big football game against archrival Lower Merion.

For years, the school's teachers took charge of organizing the show - a mega-production featuring break-dancers, flag twirlers, video skits, and professional lighting. More than graduation and senior dances, the beat-Lower-Merion rally is described by alumni as the defining moment of their high school experience.

But months of stalled contract negotiations have prompted teachers to sit this one out. And for the first time, the success and failure of the spirit show lies squarely on the shoulders of students such as Garber.

"This is the week that defines our school," said Garber, the student body president. "My gut feeling was I knew we could do it. I knew it would feel a little different, but this is our senior year."

How hard could organizing a pep rally really be? At Radnor, one of the most affluent and competitive public schools in suburban Philadelphia, it's not just a pep rally. It's a school-spirit arms race.

Radnor and Lower Merion have been battling it out on the football field for 114 years in what is believed to be the oldest continuous high school rivalry in the United States.

The pep rally, though, is a relatively new tradition.

Keith Lynam, the parent of a Radnor senior, remembers his own senior class' version of the event in 1981.

"I think we put a mirror ball up on the ceiling and brought in one of the spotlights from the gym," he said.

These days, the event has all the glitz and glamour of a Broadway spectacular. Black lights installed in the school's gym give performers an eerie glow, dance groups fine-tune their steps for weeks, and a seven- to eight-minute video shown each year requires shoots in locations around the township.

"To call it a pep rally doesn't really do it justice," said Chris Kingsberry, a parent of a senior. "It's like the American high school on steroids - but in a good way."

One year, the Eagles cheerleaders were brought in to pump up the teens.

"One teacher called it a monstrosity," said Alan Mezger, a social studies teacher and spokesman for the teachers' union, the Radnor Township Education Association. "She meant that as a compliment, but it really can take up a significant amount of time."

This year, as teachers headed into pep-rally planning season without a finished contract, the enthusiasm just wasn't there, Mezger said. (Also, the teacher who has led the planning for years opted out to deal with a family illness.)

Negotiations between the educators and the district stalled in late summer over salary schedules. They have been working without a contract since Sept. 1.

"We've certainly been given a message from the school board, and it wasn't a message of value," Mezger said. "We have to make decisions. If I'm going to spend two hours at school working on a dance, that's two hours I'm not spending with my family."

The educators announced their decision to the students at a meeting last month.

"They told us it was a hard decision for them, but it wasn't about the students," Garber said. "It was nerve-racking, but they had faith we could lead the production ourselves."

Garber and the rest of the student body set out to plan a show that would equal, if not top, the previous years' productions.

Enlisting help from parents like Lynam, a contractor who has served as a one-man prop shop and stage manager, the students put together their own skits, sold T-shirts to raise money for the process, and set out to mimic many of the traditions of previous years' events.

But in discussing the preparations, Lynam was quick to point out that the teenagers - not the parents - had taken on the lion's share of the responsibility. They all had a hand in installing 70 feet of track lighting and constructing a 32-by-20-foot pirate ship to complement this year's theme: "Pirates of the Caribbean."

They choreographed their own dances and shot their own video.

"They've been awesome. They've been absolutely incredible," Lynam said. "They've really overcome their obstacles."

And as Garber cued music for a full dress rehearsal of the production Thursday afternoon, he began to see an inkling of the pep rally's glorious past.

"I think we're going to pull it off," Garber said. "It's looking like it's going to be great."