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Photo by Emily Featherston.
Andy Carpenter, Pizitz Middle School’s assistant principal for curriculum and instruction, said the mascot could be “a rallying point” for students.
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Photo by Emily Featherston.
The new Pizitz pirate mascot was unveiled at a late September pep rally, where Andy Carpenter, the assistant principal for curriculum and instruction, donned the costume.
Christian Swaid, a seventh-grader at Pizitz Middle School in Vestavia Hills, said he really likes everything about the school’s new pirate mascot.
But there’s one thing he loves the most — the pirate’s huge grin.
It’s an expression Swaid has been wearing himself ever since the new mascot came charging out to a screaming crowd at the school’s last pep rally of the year Sept. 29.
“It was just phenomenal,” he said. “It was such a grand surprise.”
The surprise hit the student body in the sweet spot, but it was not something that caught Swaid off guard — he’d been working toward that moment ever since he’d been elected as the seventh-graders’ SGA representative at the beginning of the year.
After the idea of a mascot got thrown around with friends, Swaid formed a committee and began to work on drafting a business plan to make it happen.
“It was an amazing challenge,” he said.
But it didn’t stop there.
As Swaid and the committee talked with various school and school board leaders, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t just a good move for school spirit — it could be great for the community, too. They wanted their sister school — Liberty Park Middle — to share the experience with Pizitz.
Liberty Park already had a mascot — the Lancer — but Swaid partnered with a friend, LPMS student Marshal Grayson, to find out a way both schools could get some new blood in the mascot department.
“We decided to try to work out a cleaning opportunity,” Swaid said.
So, he contacted Vestavia’s Watkins Cleaners to see if owner Danny Watkins would be willing to clean both middle schools’ mascots each year for free.
He was. In fact, he said he’d do it twice a year. “Watkins Cleaners will be more than happy to support Christian and the Vestavia school system with this matter,” Watkins wrote to the school board.
Kacy Pierce, principal of Liberty Park Middle School, said she was excited about the collaboration.
“I am thrilled to see our students from both middle schools working together,” she said. “We’ve had a costumed mascot here for about eight years, so we were so excited to help Pizitz in their planning and working out how to have these costumes cleaned and go together. Any time we can get the two middle schools working together on whatever project [with] our students and with our teachers, we are always thrilled when that happens.”
Sheila Phillips, superintendent of Vestavia Hills City Schools, said she was impressed with the way the whole thing transpired.
“I wish everyone could have seen the plan presented by this special group of young men in a ‘Shark Tank’-style forum and the manner in which they handled themselves,” she said. “I am proud to support their initiative. This is an example of the quality of student we serve in Vestavia Hills.”
And those students felt the success of their plan in a deep way when that pirate ran out onto the basketball court, hands raised, while cheers filling the gym. “It just feels like I’ve made an accomplishment that’s going to be remembered,” Swaid said.
It was a fun, kid-initiated idea, said Andy Carpenter, assistant principal at Pizitz. “Everyone loved it,” he said. “It was a really fun thing for the school.”
In the future, students will try out to wear the mascot costume, but for the pep rally, Carpenter was the one to put it on and run onto the court.
“I can’t really tell you what it looked like because I could barely see,” he said with a laugh. “But it was a very exciting moment for the students.”
The new mascot is a “unifying symbol,” according to Pizitz Principal Meredith Hanson. “The excitement the mascot created was another example of our creed — character, excellence, family; where Pirates lead, others follow.”
In keeping with that, before the mascot made his debut, Swaid made him a gold-chain necklace that says “Respect.”
“That’s our main motto this year at school,” he said.
In the coming days, Pizitz students will put on fundraisers to pay for the pirate costume, paid for with a loan from Swaid’s family, so they could have it in time for the pep rally.
Carpenter said the mascot could be “a rallying point” for students.
“I think it’ll be great for the future and will offer kids ways to be involved in the spirit and culture of the school,” he said.
