Thanksgiving collections are a big deal at school, and this year the student council decided to start a new tradition to replace the previous “Can Castles” collection. 

“We thought the school needed something new to get them hyped about donating again,” said junior class president Luciana Picasso. 

This new challenge provided a change for the entire school community and got students more involved. 

“With both can castles and can collection, we always achieved getting the cans for the community,” said student activities director Ms. Ana Figueras. “What I have seen as a difference, though, is more people from each class participating and bringing in the cans.” 

The new idea revolves around football season and is also an opportunity for each class to win spirit points. The way the collection works is that for every 100 cans of food a class brings, they score one touchdown, with the ultimate goal of beating the other classes to 20 touchdowns, or 2,000 cans. The race to score the most touchdowns was displayed at the front of the school and included a mock football field with cutouts of each class president to mark the number of touchdowns scored.

“I think the football field came out super cute and it was a good way to get everyone excited about donating cans and moving forward along on touchdown lines,” said sophomore student council representative Bianca Baena.

The main goal in creating this fun and new way of collecting cans was to receive at least 8,000 cans to be able to donate to the Agape Network, Strengthening Families Program, Catholic Charities, Notre Dame D’ Haiti Catholic Church, San Juan Bosco Children’s Learning Center, and St. Mary’s Cathedral School.

“The goal of all of our Thanksgiving outreaches is to be able to feed over 650 families that don’t have the opportunity to have Thanksgiving the way most of us do,” Ms. Figueras said. 

Once all the cans have been collected, volunteers will make food baskets to deliver to the hundreds of families in need. 

The seniors won the competition, collecting over 2,000 cans by the second day and earning 100 spirit points. The sophomores placed second and earned 75 spirit points. The can collection ends on Monday, November 14, which is also when the final scoring of each grade will be announced. All students are encouraged to continue bringing cans until this date, regardless of their class’ standing in the race.