High school moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it. Every day, we balance friends, sports, homework and extracurricular activities — the cacophony of commitments, mountain of meetings and torrent of to-dos pulling us in every direction. But amid this constant crusade, we have forgotten something. Something that at first, seemed inconsequential, but that has left a gaping hole in the heart and soul of every Wildcat and Madcow: we have forgotten The Juice.

“The Juice” is what makes WJ great — what others would call “spirit” or “pride.” The Juice is the adrenaline that courses through our veins on Friday nights against B-CC, the divine nectar that fuels us during a test. But showing up to sporting events is just a small part of what The Juice is about. More importantly, it’s about our attitude towards our home, Walter Johnson High School.

We shouldn’t just turn out to athletic events when our team is good or when we’re winning. The Juice is about supporting Walter Johnson High School in every way possible; about being happy to be at WJ. The Juice should not be fed on wins. Wins should be fed off The Juice.

It seems that in the past few years, and especially this year, The Juice has stopped flowing. In particular, this year’s senior class, the Class of 2025, seems to be in the midst of a Juice drought. It is up to seniors to be the Juiciest, so when seniors are showing up to class with zero consideration for spirit week, not cheering at the pep rally and skipping senior events like shed painting and sunrise, the message we send is that ‘we don’t want to be here.’

In 2019, when “The Juice” first became a concept, WJ had been notorious for not showing out, having a low-energy student section and lacking school spirit. But the Class of 2019 changed that, setting the example for future classes and making sure The Juice flowed through all the grade levels.

When students returned to WJ for the first time in more than a year in 2021, still then, The Juice flowed. We were grateful for what we had lost, and that it had been returned. We did things like inventing the WJ Drum and the WJ Baby to help our Juice flow. But now, we have forgotten what life was like when The Juice did not flow, and we have become complacent.

The Juice is critical to WJ. When The Juice flows, the people are happy — they enjoy being in school. It falls on the Class of 2025 to do something about this drought. Go to school events. Care about others. Take pride in what we do. Set the tone. Lead our school. Let this mess turn into a message: The Juice must, once again, pour through our walls and halls.