Girls wrangled up dates this year to attend the annual Sadie Hawkin’s event put on by the Student Leadership class, April 13. This year’s theme was “Saddle Up for Sadies,” which entailed the students traveling to a barn to participate in a country fair and line dancing with their dates.

The various couples dressed in country clothes, ranging from plaid shirts to overalls and even cowboy hats to keep within the Sadies tradition of matching with each girls’ dates. The night’s events involved carnival booths, inflatable games, buffet-style BBQ dinner and line dancing. Upon arrival, students were also given the option to purchase pictures by Mullins Photography, which posed the students by an old truck to create the rustic feel for the shoot.

For the Student Leadership class so much effort went into this year’s Sadies, that the finished feeling was a relief. Student Leadership member Kristen Rosenthal, ’13, worked many hours on the decorations team to plan each detail of the event.

“It’s great because you can see the before and after of all your work,” Rosenthal said. “You can see everything really pay off. We worked really really hard for about a month to pull this off. I really enjoyed myself and I think almost everyone did. It’s nice to have our work appreciated.”

Rosenthal has attended all four of her Sadies and thinks this one was the best. The atmosphere and activities served as the best compared to previous years, she said.

“I’ve gone to Sadies all four years,” Rosenthal said. “I think this is the best year that we’ve ever had for Sadies. I feel like everybody really got together; we bonded as a family. The enviroment really set the tone for the evening.”

Student Leadership advisor, and head of the event, Kim Bimat feels that this Sadies was blessed to receive so many donations to make it possible. While trying to work within a budget, the donations made many of the night’s aspects possible.

“I think any time you can get the community involved it is a great resource, especially at Fresno Chrstian where it’s very family oriented,” Bimat said. “People want to be involved, so any time you encourage them to be a part of your team, it gets them excited. I hope that it builds momentum for the future.”

Sophomore Mackenzie Devereaux attended Sadies for the second time this year with her date Nick Fontes, ’15. She felt that the night was a great memory for her sophomore year.

“It was actually fun,” Devereaux said. “I didn’t think it was going to be, but it was. The barn dance was a lot different than I expected. I liked last year’s too, but the problem with it was that there were long bus rides in between each location. I liked just being able to hang out this year. I really liked the bounce houses and the tracker ride. It was a great night and I made a lot of memories.”

Adam Loughney, ’14, also attended Sadies for the first time. He especially enjoyed the line dancing, and hopes for future events to include line dancing because so many students enjoyed the experience.

“This was actually my very first Sadies,” Loughney said. “I think it was very well planned and executed. It was very well done, and I had a great time. I would love to do the line dancing thing again. I hope that it would be possible to do something similar in the future. All together I just thought it was really fun. The whole set up was just well done, like having the food as a buffet; that was really cool.”

Freshman Reese Roggenstein had some doubts about the event, but was pleasantly surprised. He has some hopes to improve the event for future years.

“This was my first year,” Roggenstein said. “I thought it was pretty good; better than I expected it to be. I was expecting it to be poorly done, but we actually pulled it off. I would like to see more activities next year. It was kind of hard to kill four hours of time with the few activities we had, so we should get more of those.”

Bimat thought the feedback from the students was extremely positive and hopes for next year to be even more successful.

“I personally had a ton of fun with Sadies, so if the students were honest with their critiques of the events, I think it went really well,” Bimat said. “It seems like it’s been really great. One of the most encouraging compliments to Student Leadership has been through the seniors and how excited they were about the event, saying it was their favorite Sadies.”

For more features, read the April 11 article, Career Day gives students glimpse into possible futures.