Stuyvesant’s Badminton Team Receives First Place for Holiday Door Decorating Contest

Throughout the month of December, the Stuyvesant administration and Student Union (SU) hosted a holiday door decorating contest between clubs. All participating teams filled out a form to be assigned a door and were then given two weeks to decorate the door to ultimately be judged for prize money that would be added to their respective club accounts. The badminton team won first place and received $500, the Junior Caucus won second place and received $250, and the girls’ varsity basketball team won third place and received $100.

The event organizers were originally inspired to host the contest by staff members who have decorated their doors in previous years. “One of the things we’ve been doing this year is […] trying to encourage more school spirit,” School Business Manager and Director of Family Engagement Dina Ingram said. “There are some staff members who decorate doors for the holidays and so we [thought] that it was a great idea.”

Stuyvesant’s badminton team was announced the winning team on December 23. Their design consisted of a colorful Christmas tree and a ladder of minions dressed in winter apparel. After devoting time and effort into the detailed artwork and planning, members were excited to learn about the results. “When I saw the e-mail, I was really happy and the first thing that I did was send it to my friends who helped me decorate the door,” junior and badminton team Vice President Natalie Keung said.

Though the team only recently received their prize, they have already determined their fund allocations. “We will spend about one-fifth of it on buying the plastic birdies, and the remaining amount we will divide within each meeting, since courts are expensive to rent. We will [also] take a few dollars off of each person[’s dues],” Keung said.

However, during the door-decorating process, the team was unable to find sufficient participants, which made it difficult to find materials and come up with ideas. “[Difficulties with] finding materials and brainstorming an idea, [as well as a] lack of people able to work on it, [were all issues],” sophomore and member of the boys’ badminton team Nicholas Foh said.

The decorating process was also time-sensitive, especially because participants had to deal with strict deadlines. “It took [us] at least five or six days [...]. We [originally] had an idea that didn’t really work out so we had to start over,” Keung said. “We didn’t really realize the deadline was coming until the last minute, so we rushed a lot on Monday and Tuesday night.”

In response to the tight deadlines, administrators aim to provide more preparation time in the future. “I think what we learned from it is maybe to start a little sooner, because […] most of the festive doors were not up until that last week before break,” Ingram said.

Regardless of the numerous challenges that participants faced, the contest provided necessary bonding opportunities, making it an unforgettable experience. “[The contest was] a chance for us to have a team bonding moment over working together on the door,” Foh said. “It was really fun staying after school with my friends to work on [it].”

Ultimately, organizers of the door decorating contest hoped to provide a fun, challenging, and spirited competition for participants, and they plan to host the contest again in years to come. “We hope to have more people join in and decorate [in future years]. There’s no reason not to continue as long as we have the unrestricted funds to be able to do it,” Ingram said. “We had a great time and I hope the kids did too […] It was so hard to decide a winner.”