It was an exciting day Friday, Sept. 16 at Prince Edward Collegiate Institute as its newest incoming class engaged in exciting activities all afternoon.

Grade Nine Day is held regular to introduce PECI freshmen to their fellow peers and create new bonds over fun activities. Teacher and PECI graduate Ryan Gabourie said these types of days are very important to their newest Panthers as it gives them a chance to meet new people, engage with teachers and just have some fun.

A Panther alumnus, Gabourie recalled back to his first Grade Nine Day.

“I remember a Grade Nine Activity day that was quite similar to this one with a variety of activities and games. I don’t remember the activities, but I remember having a fun event to look forward to which helped ease the stress of entering the new world of high school,” he said.

Grade Nine Day was formerly held every year for new students. This however changed in the fall of 2020 due to the COVID pandemic and wasn’t held for the new students that year. This school year brought back some normality the school once knew and helped its students get excited about clubs, sports and events like this one.

Grade Nine Day was organized, set up and scheduled by the school’s entrepreneurship class who spent a significant amount of time making preparations.

The class put in a lot of work to organize the grade nine students into teams, creating headbands for the students to wear, setting up different events for the teams to compete in and creating schedules for each team to follow. The teams themselves were colour coded, examples include Blue, Pink, Orange and Black just to name a few.

Each team was led by students from the entrepreneurship class and as each team went to each event they kept score of their wins and losses in each game.

Ultimately, the scores were lost and the day ended up being about fun and school spirit.