Whether students made their way from the basketball game to Cokely Field House or only showed up for the rave party, highlighter-yellow beamed off of jumping bodies at the Court-warming dance on Friday night. Glow sticks were handed out at the door and the music never stopped as the Jays danced the night away after their basketball victory over Truman High School.

  Multiple conga lines were formed and crowds of students raced to the end to join in on the glowing human, highlighter worm that weaved around the gym. A giant group dance to the song “Cupid shuffle” is well known and had the students in sync moving “to the right, to the right, to the right, the right, the right,” and shuffle-kicking to the beat.

  “It was fun because you could feel everyone’s energy and everyone could forget about the problems they had earlier in the day,” senior Jacklyn Drewry said.

  Every other song triggered a dance-off between students as circles formed around senior Janai Simpson  and sophomore Ryan Bremer. Student SnapChat stories glowed as they documented the evening using the Geo filters designed by the Leadership class for Court-warming week.

  A short ceremony for the  Court-warming court and a congratulations to the the King, senior Brett Schweitzer and Queen, senior Kasey Allshouse was the only thing that stopped the Jays from bustin’ a move.

  The students seemed to enjoy the hard work that was put into making the glow dance happen. Before students could glow crazy at the glow dance, somebody had to set up the posters, black lights, balloons and bubbles. Those people were StuCo members, who spent hours preparing for the big dance.

  “We spend a ton of time  setting up before the dance even starts,” junior Maddie Ripper said. “It takes a lot of thought beforehand to have an idea of what exactly we want done to help make the dance as cool as it can be.”

  In a matter of hours, StuCo leaders transformed the hallway out of the gym into a glowing tunnel covered in dark posters and black lights, with signs leading to Cokely where the DJ and decorations awaited.

  “Sometimes it seems very weird, being in the school and setting up all the decorations because until the dance actually starts the real effects of the decorations are hard to imagine,” senior Olivia Book said.

  After using an immeasurable amount of tape and hanging hundreds of yards of streamers across the school, StuCo sat back to go over any last minute details that may have needed to be changed. It could be as small as wrapping some tables in some neon string, or as big as putting black paper over the ceiling lights to create a blacklight tunnel.

  “You never really know how well the dance is going to turn out since so much can go wrong in a matter of minutes,” Ripper said. “Luckily the glow dance has been super successful since it’s return and the decorations are so fun to work with.”