Baseball fans filed slowly into Nats Park in anticipation of the Nats’ midday faceoff against the Atlanta Braves on Thursday, April 23. As the game went on, however, the soaring (albeit rather scarce) Nats home-run balls failed to captivate the crowd; instead, spectators’ eyes were affixed to the towering Hopper mascot proudly presiding over section 104. That afternoon, the crowd bore witness to a scene far more interesting than that produced by any regular-season MLB game: an off-site GDS Hopper Holiday.
While the event has typically been a surprise since its inception in 2011, this year marked a change from more common on-campus proceedings, prompting administrators to reveal its existence two weeks in advance and plan an early departure from the game.
“Community time, some bonding, a little break from the grind of whatever it is we’re doing, a chance to be together [and] doing something different and fun,” Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy said to the Bit, outlining the main objectives of a break from their regular schedules. “I think that’s the main point of it.”
Often preceded by shortened class periods or a half-day of classes, Hopper Holiday usually consists of a school-wide recreational activity starting around lunchtime. Past Hopper Holidays have featured an ice-skating rink in the high school garage and bubble soccer on the GDS field, as well as the occasional off-campus celebration, including a trip to a trampoline park in 2024.
“Typically, [students] come back from winter break, and I reach out to the principal and to Russell [Shaw], and say, ‘Hey, do we want to do one this year? What do we think?’” Killy said. “We like to have it pretty much planned before we leave for spring break.”
Last year, GDS didn’t organize a Hopper Holiday. Killy said there aren’t strict criteria for whether Hopper Holiday takes place in a given year. But, because Hopper Holiday festivities did not take place last year, Killy said he was more inclined to organize a Hopper Holiday this year.
On April 9, the high school office sent an email to the high school community announcing the Hopper Holiday plans and asking that parents RSVP digitally on their kids’ behalf by April 17. In order to reach the high school before 3:15 p.m., buses headed back to school at 2 p.m., about an hour after they’d first arrived at Nats Park. If parents gave permission for students to self-dismiss in the RSVP form, they were allowed to stay longer; otherwise, students had to leave after approximately four innings. Anyone with athletic or theater obligations, such as daily practices and rehearsals, was required to depart on the bus.
Sophomore Ella Maas, who had a lacrosse game immediately following the baseball game, had to head back to GDS before the end of the Nats game, boarding a bus at 2 p.m. “We had to leave pretty quickly, which meant I wasn’t really there for a lot of the game,” she said. “For people who didn’t have athletics afterwards, I thought it was a really nice idea.”
This year marks GDS’ second Hopper Holiday appearance at a Nats game; the first was in 2018. According to Killy, planning a trip to a baseball game has twice over proved itself to be—per Killy’s description—a “nightmare.” He said one challenge the school faced was finding a game that took place in the middle of the school day, citing the timing difficulties as the reason GDS hadn’t attended a Nats game in so long.
Finances, however, were not an issue for this year’s Hopper Holiday: According to Killy, an alum donated all the tickets to Thursday’s game. Killy declined to give the name of the alum who paid for the tickets.
In the case of the 2018 Hopper Holiday, the school kept the specifics of the trip a secret until the day before. Now, Killy said, “If we’re going off campus, we typically have to announce it [earlier].” In the original email detailing Hopper Holiday’s proceedings, the school explained that the early announcement and RSVP forms were necessary so the school could ensure they had enough lunches and game tickets to accommodate every student who wished to attend the game.
Because this year’s buses could not accommodate all the students who planned to attend, upperclassmen took the Metro to the game. The school purchased Metro cards for each upperclassman who attended the game. In addition to meal and ticket purchases, Killy said the logistics of Metro transportation obligated the school to announce Hopper Holiday even earlier.
“I’m glad they told us in advance,” freshman Maya Rand said, “’cause then we had time to prepare, get our schoolwork in order, get outfits [and] get our Nats swag.”
Senior Jaden Carnegie, however, had a different take: “I kind of like the surprise of Hopper Holiday,” Carnegie said. “That’s the good part.”
“I think if we’re going somewhere off campus, it’s probably good if they release it [early],” senior Lulu Tirado said, “just because you couldn’t plan for it outfit-wise and everything like that. But I think that there’s also, especially if it’s on campus, a little bit of fun [in] keeping it a surprise.”