The Coronavirus pandemic came as a shock to all, quickly changing almost every element of our lives. Specifically, student’s and teachers’ lives felt a large impact as they adapted to the safety measures implemented to cut down on Covid’s fast spread.  In order to keep members safe, Pinnacle High School (PHS) clubs changed the way they function. 

Each year PHS students look forward to the exciting club rush that takes place during lunch. Students run from booth to booth to hear about the exciting details of possible clubs that interested them, getting candy from E-board members of various clubs hoping to entice potential members to their table. Dianna Lancaster, junior, reminisced about past club rushes. 

“I love in-person club rush, again just the energy of going from booth to booth and of course the candy was a bonus,” said Lancaster.

With Covid Cases rising, an online platform of Club rush proved necessary. Thus, this year students clicked on a school-shared slideshow that featured a list of clubs offered at the school with short, informational videos that e-board members made in hopes to catch new members’ attention. However, club rush provided problems for some clubs.  Junior Aditi Baghel, president of Interact Club, expressed a concern the online platform proved not as successful in informing students and giving them the opportunity to learn about some of the new clubs, as in previous years. She shared her preference for the in-person club rush. 

“Instead of just having the club name and a link, it would be much more interesting to have people and a poster to attract people,” Baghel said. 

Clubs worked tirelessly this year around the many different obstacles that the pandemic introduced to society. Club meetings, many operated through Google Meets, allowed for students to join meetings in the comfort of their homes at the click of a button. 

“Online club meetings are a lot easier to attend to because it is easier to join and provides a better time to relax being in my own home,” Lancaster said.

DECA saw many changes in the way they ran their meetings. Junior Justin Doyle, DECA officer, shared some insight. 

“We’ve adapted so if you’re on campus when we have a meeting you can go in person or if you’re not comfortable or still doing online you can join digitally so we can include all of our members,” said Doyle.

Through all of these challenges, clubs at Pinnacle made sure to keep a positive mindset to persevere through these unprecedented times. 

“It is still fun…I love my officer team. I think that we are probably the best-equipped officer team to handle this situation,” said DECA president, senior Brynn Kramer. “Since some of the kids we have are so good at online stuff, and it is just fun to see how we can change and make DECA better even in the future if we go back in person, I think there are some acts of this we are going to keep.” 

Another school club that faced many challenges this year, Prom Club began to plan, one of the most popular annual events at Pinnacle in order to make big changes to keep students safe. Ariana Williams, President of the Prom Committee, spoke about the possible changes they considered from the beginning of the year after prom was canceled last year due to the pandemic.

“I think there will be more sanitation, distance between people maybe even have masks. We aren’t sure,” said Williams early in the fall semester.  

Like Prom, most clubs on campus dealt with changes made to enforce safety. 

“It is really hard to think of online volunteering activities,” said Baghel of her service-oriented Interact club. “We also have to make sure that we balance out our volunteering activities with online and in-person.” 

With the option of staying online or coming back to school, clubs faced even more changes in ensuring that their members stayed informed with club news. Mrs. Behrendt, sponsor of Gay-Straight Alliance Club at Pinnacle, shared of the struggles of hybrid.

“When we were all online it was easier because we could all be on the computer together. But now, since it is half and half, we really can’t have any meetings because it becomes difficult,” Behrendt said.

 Despite the challenges at hand, Pinnacle students attacked them with a positive mindset and willingness to help their peers. Clubs remained active all year, even if in a way never imagined before.