A new structure of Cape Henry Upper School clubs has been implemented to ensure student involvement, hard work getting done and new ideas getting executed. The Head of Student Life, Mr. Ken Carrier, has become the main leader of creating this club arrangement. This year, clubs at Cape Henry Collegiate have become a major part of the student life.
“I believe the benefit of the new structure of clubs is to help club leaders have a group of students that come each week and bring new ideas to the table,” Mr. Carrier said. “In the past I heard that it was hard to rely on certain kids to show up to the club meetings consistently. By switching to the current format I believe that we can really maximize club potential by having reliable people there to execute plans and reach club goals.”
This year, the student life has created a structured club plan to ensure everyone is involved and no time is wasted. The clubs meet Thursday and Friday every week and productively accomplish work and upcoming plans or events.
Another club that helps the outer community is Help the Homeless Club. This club is run by a junior at Cape Henry, Tyler Bass, and the main focus of this club is to help the homeless community in the area by collaborating with shelters, having school wide food or hygiene drives, and sport fundraising events.
“Our current focus is helping a certain organization by giving them goods for the holidays,” Bass said. “That includes hygiene products and other basic necessities that can be supplied for homeless people.”
This club is creating ways to implement school wide drives of things homeless people may need and not have access to like food, clothes, and hygiene products.
“Homelessness is a big problem in the US and our main goal for ‘Help the Homeless’ is to help as many people as possible,” Bass said.” “We see the problem that is happening in our country and we are trying to find as much of a solution as we can.”
A little goes a long way so the club is trying to contribute no matter how big or small, he said.
“During club meetings we discuss different ways to help people as well as different ways to let the school know what we are doing and we discuss items we need to collect,” Bass said.
During meetings there are certain goals to meet in order to start up events and to do as much as possible for the greater community.
“We are planning on doing a white out at one of the upcoming basketball games and that will help push for our cause and hopefully have people donate to help support the club,” Bass said.
While there are many more service-based clubs, there are also many hobby-based clubs such as the Music Appreciation Club. This club is run by a senior at Cape Henry, Brianna Thompson, and the main focus of the club is to share passions and interest for music with peers. The club combines many different styles of music to create playlists for pure enjoyment or some school events.
“Our current focus is having fun and listening to all different types of music with different people throughout the high school,” Thompson said.“We love to learn about different genres and styles of music.”
This club is a deeper club and dives into music as well as students interests within songs and artists. Everyone relates and gives suggestions and opinions.
“I started running this club sophomore year because I love music and I wanted to bring a lot of people together,” Thompson said. “I didn’t have a set friend group so I wanted to find other people with the same interests as me.”
This club helps people come together and relate interests on music creating friendships.
“During club meetings we make playlists and listen to music,” Thompson said. “We did make a playlist for homecoming and if there’s ever a big event at school we get asked to make a bunch of playlists that can be used.”
The school values the student-run clubs and expects them to show leadership and contribute to helping the community as well as having fun activities, events and fundraisers.