Most students avoid the halls of Wenatchee High School during the summer, yet despite having to attend a two-day training, seniors Izzy Garcia and Adam Chvilicek have given up two days of their vacation to follow in the footsteps of the DJ who inspired them their freshman year at the Ignite Frosh Fling dance.

“During my freshman year, the Ignite seniors were really cool… they made me excited for high school and gave me a positive attitude. So luckily [senior] Maddie Steitz let us DJ, and we were like, ‘Yeah, we have to do this!’” Garcia said.

Chvilicek and Garcia will get their chance at this year’s Frosh Fling dance at 8 p.m. after Ignite freshman orientation from 8 a.m. to noon on Aug. 28. Previously student run, Ignite now has the aid of English teacher Molly Butler, who introduced the Link Crew program on top of the two-day student leadership training program on Aug. 22-24.

Butler was brought on to help because of her interest and experience with Link Crew previously. “It adds purpose to it (Ignite) to have staff help and support,” Butler said.

Link Crew and Ignite aim to help freshmen involve themselves in high school to increase their academic success and engagement, and Link Crew adds a slightly different perspective on the Ignite. “Link Crew has a lot of the games and ideas we had for Ignite before, but it’s more focused on getting to know people and preparing freshmen for high school than Ignite was,” senior and student leader Devyn Blakney said.

The new student leaders, a mix of juniors and seniors who signed up to help with Ignite at the end of the previous school year, worked through training to learn to lead small groups effectively and practiced the activities they would be doing with freshmen before Ignite.

After attending orientation on the morning of Aug. 28, freshmen will return at 5:30 p.m. for an ASB-led assembly, the traditional speech from Brad Henning, who speaks on healthy relationships during high school and has spoken at WHS for many years. The dance begins in the courtyard after his keynote until 9 p.m. The rest of Wenatchee High School shows up at 9 p.m. to continue the dance, which is then Summer Breeze until 11 p.m.

For more on Thursday’s schedule, click here and scroll to page 5.