Seven clubs came together to compete in Clubs Got Talent during Life class on Thursday, Nov. 21. Seniors watched the performance live from the auditorium while the show was streamed for the other students in their classrooms.
Clubs Got Talent originated from the 80s competition “Mr. West Linn,” a fundraiser where all male students would raise money for charity. It then evolved into the Mr./Mrs./Mx. contest, a week-long event where seniors dressed up each day and carried around a bucket of change to donate for charity.
In 2021 after the hiring of Blake Williams as the new director of ASB, a new tradition emerged: lip-sync battles. The first year, it was still a competition between seniors and correlated with the Mr./Mrs./Mx., but starting in 2022, the event became what we know now as Clubs Got Talent.
Brooke Loun, sophomore, participated in the Chess Club’s performance, which included a puppet show along to the song “Mah Na Mah Na” from “The Muppets.”
“I was told that there was only going to be one class [in the auditorium], and that was the class with the most cans, and so when suddenly everyone started flooding in, it was really nerve-wracking,” Loun said. “But once you get up on stage it’s a totally different moment, singing or acting, and performing.”
The performance the Chess Club did during Club’s Got Talent originally was going to be something different.
“At the beginning of the performance we [did] a puppet show, and our president wanted to do that all the way through [the performance], but we wanted to expand on that more and make it more exciting,” Loun said. “So a lot of the choreo is based off [of] the actual [“Mah Na Mah Na” music] video which was kind of daunting since I didn’t know how many people would actually know what I was going for.”
Chess Club is run by student leaders Bill Caldwell and Macquarie Workman, juniors, and Dorian Wayne and Samuel Mathews, seniors. Three students from the club performed in Clubs Got Talent.
“It was so much fun,” Loun said. “Some of my friends were like, ‘were you embarrassed?’ And yeah, there’s always a little bit of embarrassment no matter what you do.”
The winners of Club’s Got Talent, receiving the highest cash prize, will be announced during the winter assembly on Friday, Dec. 20. Below are photos from the event on Nov. 21.
![All smiles. The group poses for a photo with last year’s book, “This is Our House,” along with their award for third Best in Show. Meikle, who was an Editor-in-Chief for the yearbook last year as well, holds both and stands at the center of the group. “That was an amazing feeling, going and grabbing the third place award,” Meikle said. “All of it paid off. I cried so much over that book, being able to receive [the award] was one of the highlights of my high school career, it was like the coolest thing ever.”](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/8bookpose_philly-1200x800.jpg)
