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Purple. The whole school was doused with the color purple after Ray-Pec had gotten the news that their fellow Panther had passed away earlier that week. On the 25th of January, students got settled into their first class of the day, and every teacher took the beginning of the class to announce the tragic loss that the school endured. Not a day had passed when the idea of “Ribbons For Sydney” spread to the whole school to support their fellow classmate and to say one last goodbye to freshman Sydney Steinhurst.

The following day, the entire school was walking the halls, wearing the color purple in some shape or form. The whole idea had come to be the night before, when the girl’s cross country team wanted to honor their teammate that had gone way too soon. The girl’s team talked amongst themselves in a group chat, and the idea of “Ribbons For Sydney” was born. The girls told all their friends, put in other group chats, tweeted, put it on their instagram and snapchat stories. “Ribbons For Sydney” was spread everywhere in a matter in minutes, and the whole school was ready to truly honor the name Sydney Steinhurst. Junior Makayla Mudd, that ran with Sydney on the cross country team was definitely surprised by the grand spread of the ribbon idea.

“So all of us girls have a group chat for the team, and one of the girls just suggested for the team to wear ribbons and then we just expanded and it ended up being as big as it was. I know a bunch of us are involved in a bunch of things, so I put it in the group chat for soccer and I know one of the girls put it in the group chat for prowlers and it was put on snapchat. When I saw it everywhere on snapchat and twitter, It was so crazy! No one knew that we would get the whole school involved on doing it,” said Mudd.

The night before the ribbons were meant to be passed out, students at the school were getting any purple they had ready to be worn the next day, and spreading to word to their friends to do the same. While the school was doing their part beforehand, the cross country team were heading to the store to get an abundance of purple ribbon to hand out to the school the next morning and scissors to cut up the soon to be tied ribbon. From the amount of publicity the “Ribbons For Sydney” was getting, the team knew they needed a game plan to get the whole school a purple ribbon.

“Well five or six of us showed up at around 6:45 am at school to set up the table in the lunchroom and then other people cut the ribbons the night before. Then a couple of us, maybe four of us that were tying the ribbons around wrists and then when we began running out of ribbon, everybody else was cutting the ribbons so we would have enough for the people still in line,” said Mudd.

Once the first bell rung, and the purple ribbons were handed out in the school’s cafeteria, the entire student body was all joined together to support Sydney. People had the ribbons in their hair, around their wrist, on their backpacks, students even had multiple ribbons of different shades of purple just to go that extra mile. Sophomore Raelyn Kirchhoff also ran with Sydney Steinhurst and took the whole purple theme to match her style.

“I wore purple, actually our purple cross country shirt, and then I wore a bunch of ribbon on my wrist and even tied them on my tennis shoes. I was just excited how everybody wore purple and came up to get ribbons and support Sydney, so it just made me happy,” said Kirchhoff.

Overall the cross country team was proud of the school for taking such a big part in the cause and took the time to honor a girl they may or may have not known, but in the end, she was a student just like them. That day, the school ironically had an assembly and it only ensured how much support their was all around the school when you could see the whole gym covered in purple. At the end of the day, the school truly came together as one to say one last goodbye to Sydney. Coach of the cross country and track team, Jamin Swift even had one last thing to say about the girl he had the honor of coaching for the one season and the grand event hosted for her at the high school.

“Sydney was an awesome kid with a great personality. We will miss her dearly. Sydney loved running and loved the color purple and the girls love ribbons, so I believe that is where the ribbon idea stemmed from,” said Jamin.

In a matter of 24 hours, the school was able to get on a cause, make a plan, and tr. Ray-Pec will miss Sydney Steinhurst and the things she offered to the school and the event that occured for her name, will go down in Ray-Pec history.