The spirit shirt is one of DePaul Prep’s ongoing traditions. It’s exclusive to Homecoming — the most popular dance at DePaul Prep. The new spirit shirt competition stirred up even more excitement for an already anticipated event.

The recent Homecoming T-shirt contest was the first time in DePaul Prep history students could decide what their spirit T-shirt would be. According to Chris Petersen, the Director of Student Activities at DePaul Prep, the Homecoming t-shirt design used to be exclusively run by the Theater Society as a fundraiser for their department. Eventually it outgrew its humble origins, becoming a core tradition at the school.

With growing popularity for the spirit shirt, the DePaul Prep student government took over, creating the T-shirt design within their organization. However, all that changed this year when the contest was outsourced to students. “When more students have a say in whatever it is, right, then there’s more buy-in and there’s more excitement,” Petersen said.

This year, an impressive number of students showed up to design the shirt. They submitted via email to Ms. Parker, then waited to hear back from the administration. Even Petersen was surprised, as he said, “We had over 20 submissions, which blew me away”.

Helen Menard, a junior, won the contest. The prize was a $50 gift card, a ticket to Homecoming worth $25 and a t-shirt she designed. Additionally, she had her T-shirt worn by the majority of the student body.

“It was weird,” said Menard, “I kind of forgot that I was going to be a part of (the contest).”

Despite how surreal the experience was, she “100%” recommends that students should submit, as she said, “It was fun just to make it and then get opinions on it.” According to Menard, she decided to submit a design when she learned about it over the school announcements. She then spent 30-40 minutes working on the design on Procreate, an app for digital art.

During the selection process, the student government narrowed the 20 design submissions down to three, and those were voted on by the student body through a Google Form in Schoology. After this, the design was looked over by Dr. Megan Stanton-Anderson, Principal, and Mary Dempsey, President of DePaul Prep, to confirm that it followed the DePaul Prep brand guidelines and strengthened the image and spirit of a young school. Sometimes, they tweak the design, but they didn’t change anything this year, Petersen said.

Junior Laina Ligimari is especially excited about the spirit shirt. “I really liked the homecoming shirt this year,” she said. “I thought the design was simple but still cute.”

Other students also like it, such as sophomore Abby Burke, who said, “It’s a nice change from last year’s [shirt] and I liked being able to vote.”

This contest is here to stay for the foreseeable future. ”We will continue to have students design it because it was super popular.” said Petersen.