Lunenburg High School
Lunenburg High School is the high school of the town of Lunenburg, Massachusetts in north-central Worcester County, and is located at 1079 Massachusetts Avenue. Since the 2000-01 school year the schools administration has consisted of Mr. Michael Barney (Principal) and Mr. Greg Smith (Vice Principal). The school encompasses grades 9-12, and educate students from both Lunenburg and Shirley, Massachusetts.
Traditions
Lunenburg High School has a number of traditions that are very specific to the school and are not seen in many other High Schools.
Homecoming is one of the most popular traditions of LHS. During the Homecoming season (September until about mid-October) each the Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior classes spend many weeknights and weekends leading up to the Homecoming football game creating floats for the Homecoming Parade. These floats are usually placed on flatbeds and created using tissue paper, chicken wire, plywood, papier-mâché, and many other assorted materials. Before the school year the Student Council chooses a theme for the Homecoming floats for the classes to follow and once the theme is revealed to the school the Seniors choose what their float will be, then the juniors, and so on. In the past the float themes have been everything from movies and board games to cities of the world and cereals. The Homecoming parade and football game usually take place on a Saturday around mid-October, with the winner of the float competition being revealed after the game. The winning float always causes controversy, with accusations of bias towards classes often been accused of the judges, and in 1999 the Senior class, who had created their float to represent the movie Titanic, attacking and ripping apart the Sophomore class float of Jaws soon after the winner was announced, which resulted in the suspension of several students and the cancellation of the Homecoming Dance. There is also believed to be an unspoken agreement amongst the judges that a Freshman float can never win, or that a Senior class who has never won a competition will be guaranteed a win, but these theories have never been proven. In recent years popularity of the float competition has dwindled within the school, resulting in the Student Council to have to review the tradition in order to determine whether or not the tradition is no longer necessary or if there is a way the school can change the tradition to bring more popularity back to it.
Competitive Class Plays and Freshman Speeches
The Competitive Class Plays and the Freshman Speech Competitions have been a staple at LHS for many decades. The Freshman Speech competition is a competition involving every Freshman English class where each student is given the task of memorizing a famous speech, fairy tale, short story, or the like, which is at least 5 minutes long. The English teachers score each students speech and eliminate students until there are only three students left. On the night of the Competitive Class Play competition the remaining three students recite their speeches to a packed auditorium and are graded by three judges outside of the English Department, and a winner is voted on and revealed at the end of the Play Competition. The Competitive Class Plays are very popular amongst the student body. The Sophomore, Junior, and Senior classes choose a play, usually running about a half hour, to put on on the night of the Class Play Competition. The plays can be tragedies, histories, comedies, anything which can be put on within a half hours time (although for many years comedies have been the overwhelming favorite choice to be put on). Each play is directed by a teacher within the school, and is put on in front for the school and town on a Thursday night in the second full week of February. At the end of the night, an award is given to the class who put on the best play as voted on by the judges, as well as awards given out to the best actor/actress, best supporting actor/actress, and awards which are sometimes year specific. It should be noted that the only class to have won the Play Competition each of their Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years was the class of 2005, whose director all three years was History teacher and girls soccer coach Mr. Timothy Normandin.
Mr. LHS
Mr. LHS is an event created by class of 2002 and their advisor Mrs. Noreen Berry which has taken place every year since. The event usually takes place in the same week of St. Patrick's Day in March, with the exception of the first Mr. LHS which happened in January, and this past years competition which took place in May due to contract negotiations between the Teachers Association and the town. Competition rules change year to year depending on how many participants are in the competition, but it usually starts off with a dance number, moves into a flexing portion, a talent portion, an elmination round, and a question and answer portion, then finally a winner is declared by the judges. For three consecutive years from 2003-2005 every winner of Mr. LHS came from Shirley, Massachusetts, the town next to Lunenburg which students are offered school choice to attend Lunenburg. Although this is clearly something for the students of Shirley, who have always been greatly outnumbered in the school, to be proud of, these years have been known as the years of the "Shirley Curse" amongest students who come from Lunenburg.
Multicultural Festival
The Multicultural Festival is put on every two years and usually takes place in April, although it has happened at other times of the school year. The Multicultural Festival is on a rotating schedule with the School Musical, with neither event happening in the same school year as the other so as teachers, students, and the school administration do not tire themselves out. The Multicultural Festival involves each class, school group (National Honor Society, Student Council, etc) and many other groups from within the entire school system and within the town gathering at the High School and selling foods from all over the world. The Festival also has live entertainment and exhibitions for people to watch and participate in including Native American dancing, wheelchair basketball, Irish step dancing, spoken word artists, storytellers, and live bands. Each school in the town usually contributes soemthing to the festival, which is open to the town and is co-run by Lunenburgs Multicultural Association. Some of the favorite spots for people to visit at the festival include the Acoustic Cafe, the French Cafe, and the art exhibits.
Senior Sleep Out
The Senior Sleep Out is an extremely controversial event that is no longer put on or supported by the High School, but which still continues to happen on the Thursday night before the final day of classes for the Senior class. For many years the sleep out was an even that was supported by the school, whereas the graduating class, on the night before their final day of High School, would sleep outside in tents, have fires, and stay up all night on a soccer practice field in front of the High School. After several serious accidents involving alcohol and drug use, the school discontinued the event in the late 80's to early 90's. Today, the tradition of the Senior Sleep Out continues due to the efforts of students within the Senior class who find fields within the town to camp out on and party all night long, but at great personal risk, and with the police force in the town consistently attempting to discover the location of the event and shut it down.
Athletics
The Lunenburg High School Athletic Department, since 2005, has been under the leadership of Athletic Director Peter McCauliff, who is also the Cross Country and boys Indoor and Spring Track and Field coach. Lunenburg is a member of the Mid-Wach C division of athletics. The Lunenburg High mascot is the Blue Knight. Lunenburg is well known for their outstanding Track and Field program, specifically the girls indoor and spring track teams, which consistently rank amongst the best teams in Central Massachusetts. Lunenburg High School has many sports teams including football, boys and girls soccer, cross country, and field hockey in the fall season, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls indoor track, co-ed hockey, and a ski-team in the winter season, and baseball, softball, co-ed tennis and girls and boys track and field in the spring season.
Urban Legends
Sometime during the late 1970's it is believed that after not receiving a lead role in their class play, a female student allegedly hung herself from the rafters above the stage in the auditorium. The student botched the hanging though, and instead of falling all the way to just above the stage floor, the rope caught on a beam and the student, instead of having a quick hanging, died from choking only a few inches from where she had jumped but was unable to reach up to stop herself, hence stopping above the curtains so that no one could see the student unless they looked up while on stage. After realizing that the student was missing the town searched for her for days but found nothing until about a week before the class plays were to happen. After the music teacher at the time complained about a bad smell in the auditorium the custodian was sent in to find the source of the smell, and discovered the girls body hanging from the rafters just above the curtains. It is believed that the girls ghost still haunts that auditorium to this day and that every year around the time of the Competitive Class Play competition something goes wrong with one of the class plays, i.e. a set falling apart, costumes gone missing, etc. which is believed to be the students spirit come back to haunt the auditorium and more specifically the class plays. From time to time noises are also heard from the auditorium at night when no one is inside and the doors are locked, and reports have been made by custodians that hours after closing the school and locking up the auditorium they will walk by the stage entrance from the hallway and notice that the lights had been turned back on inside the auditorium despite no one using the auditorium or having been inside the school for some time.
Notable Alumni
- Gordon Edes (1972)- Sportswriter, Boston Globe
- Erik Radvon (2000)- Sportswriter, Leominster Champion