After two weeks away from winter break, Rocklin High School enters 2026 with a bang. For students, it’s a tough feeling of having to get back in the classroom but Rocklin has a solution to that problem, runaway week. Rocklin’s runaway week is the second spirit week of the year with the theme of running away, a week that has been ongoing for over 25 years. Activities director, John Thompson, believes the week has helped not only for positivity but also academically, “It became a request that we put it in the week as we come out of winter break for academic reasons. It was really helpful as students are doing [their] makeups [so] to kind of do it at that point. It also became a really good week to bring students out of the winter spirit or winter break. They’re, you know, a little grumpy [and] a little sad that they have to come back, so why not hit them with a lot of positive energy.” All those elements attached to it have made the week a big success, and it’s been noticed.
Runaway week works similarly with how the other spirit weeks work, having fun activities with student participation and a rally on Friday. But how do the activities themselves make the students want to be a part of the week? Senior, Halle Wardlaw, believes that “it’s important to make the activities (for) people [who] want to do [it] because you have to decide if it’s something, especially for seniors, if they’d rather come back to school or not to participate in the activities.” For this year’s runaway, to Wardlaw she has “seen that the more we spend time choosing what fun activities we do, the more people that are engaged in the campus and have an easier time coming back from winter break.” Thompson also believes in that, saying how important it is to invest in the school’s culture, “Culture of a campus will either evolve or devolve depending on how much energy and effort you put into it. So knowing that kids have been staying up until three in the morning, probably sleeping in until two in the afternoon, trying to get their bodies back in line with coming back to school, not just being completely depressing or whatnot.”
Runaway has a formula to be successful just as much as the other spirit weeks earlier in the school year, but how is it all put together from start to finish? There’s actually quite a lot of pieces that go into planning this week, it all happens through ASB (Associated Student Body). Thompson explains how “there’s different subcommittees within Student Government who all have different tasks. So I talk with them about getting everything done before we leave for winter break because we immediately hit the ground running coming out of winter break and I don’t want my kids doing any work over the break,” says Thompson, “I want them to relax a little bit. So we really pushed hard to get everything lined up with borrowing the shopping cart, doing all the shopping, making the posters for the rally [and] getting the three on three basketball tournament bracket all lined up.”
Throughout runaways time, there have been several traditions used for the week including games, dress up days, and activities used for the rally. The people that are responsible for those events are on the spirit committee, one of the several sub committees in ASB. As a member of the spirit committee, Wardlaw explains that “When it comes to runaway, we use a lot of traditions that we’ve been doing but we also understand that times have changed and we’re constantly evolving as a generation and as a school. So we try to look at trends that are happening.” That evolution has been present in this year’s runaway as Wardlaw says they looked to social media for answers, “If you noticed we did the Wake snatching game in our most recent runaway rally because we had seen that all over social media and we had heard a lot of buzz that it might be fun.”
With those traditions, runaway has seen a ton of engagement from students actively participating in the games, dress up days, and showing up for the rally. One tradition that has seemed to become the most popular is the 3v3 basketball tournament. In this activity, several teams with 3 players each compete in a bracket style tournament, ending with a championship round and whoever wins the final is crowned the champion. Senior, Gabriel Tavares, was a part of the winning team and described it as “a sigh of relief going in four years. Honestly, freshman, sophomore, junior year, I wasn’t really expecting to win it because there’s older guys on campus but this was our year, if we don’t win, we’re never gonna have a chance again. So for me, it was just kind of that sigh of relief of oh we did it.” From this tradition, Wardlaw noticed that “this year there were a lot of seniors that came and stayed during lunch to watch 3v3, which is for us a big deal because it means they decided to stay at school instead of go home and do other activities.”
Rocklin’s runaway week is unique compared to the other spirit weeks. It leans into the idea of getting away from school while at the same time making students want to be at school, even after such a long break. To Wardlaw, she believes “the most important thing about runaway is to connect the students to the campus by getting them excited to come back from winter break. It’s hard and it’s a saddening time of year, just because it’s winter and it’s dead cold and it’s hard to get that encouragement back (from) coming back to school. So during runaway, it’s fun to see everyone finally getting excited after starting our new semester and ending last semester.” That excitement from students has shown and it continues to be shown through each and every year since it first started.
