The typical high schooler doesn’t like to be embarrassed. They don’t want people to laugh at them, or make fun of them. The typical high schooler would do a lot just to keep other people’s image of them intact.

The Winterfest court also prefers not to be embarrassed, however, once they are on court they have to do something that a lot of people think is pretty embarrassing: the lip syncs.

Senior Megan Fox, one of the Winterfest court members, has to participate in a lip sync with her partner, senior Aden Pomeroy, and their friends that they chose to do it with them.

“I feel like it’s set up to be embarrassing,” Megan said, “but I also feel like it will be fun still.”

People think that the lip-syncs are embarrassing, and some people even took their name off the Winterfest ballot because they didn’t want to do a lip-sync. However, the lip-syncs are meant to be fun for the spectators, and for the court members.

Megan is a member of the dance team, so she was prepared to create a two-minute lip sync. She was also excited to perform it, since she loves to dance.

“I’m looking forward to going out on the gym floor, and dancing with different people than the dance team,” Megan said. “It’ll be fun to have my friends around me and perform in front of the whole school.”

Megan was ready to have fun with something that is usually considered embarrassing. She was ready to step into her element with different people than she usually does.

The Winterfest court lip-syncs have been around for a long time. As long as history teacher, Laura Stiles, can remember. She is heavily involved in the assemblies at FHC, and she had enjoyed the lip-syncs for as long as she has been teaching at FHC.

“[I think] it started as a competition from the court members,” Stiles said. “I don’t know when it started, it’s been around forever. The court has always done something silly for Winterfest. It’s like the thing.”

The lip-syncs started as something fun for the court to do to make people excited, and it turned into a well-loved, and hilarious, tradition.

“I love it because it’s neat to see the court get their posse,” Stiles said. “You have two people on court, and maybe they have different friends, and then those friend groups come together and they make a cool show. It’s really cool [that] you get to do it with your best friends. They always impress me. They always do a good job.”

The lip syncs are always incredible, according to Stiles. The students put a lot of work into them, and it really shows when they perform. They get to go out and have fun with their friends, and when they enjoy it, it makes it even more impressive.

To make it even more impressive, the court only gets one week to create the two-minute lip sync. That’s not a lot of time.

Senior Everett Phipps takes part in many school activities, so having to create a lip sync in a week added a lot of stress. He had to try to fit it into his schedule.

“It’s been a lot of frantic putting things together, planning, and impromptu decisions,” Everett said. “It’s been working out, but we definitely did not have much preparation time. We could have used more, but it’s been working out.”

The seniors succeeded in managing their time well and creating enough time to prepare a lip sync. However, just because they succeeded doesn’t mean they weren’t stressed out about it. Stiles thinks that the seniors are probably extremely stressed, but also excited.

“If it were me, I’d be stressing out,” Stiles said. “But I’d get my good buddies who were on the dance team to come to help me out. I imagine it’s stressful. I think that the kids were really excited to do it last year, but that could have been because Covid screwed everything up the year before. Hopefully, they’re excited to do it. I would be a little nervous and stressed out since they only have a week to do it. At least they get the weekend.”