[00:00:07] Jake White: Welcome back everyone to Party Talk where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. Today, I’m chatting with a couple students that Tomas and I were actually with last week for their pre prom event. And we did some drug prevention work. We did student interviews and recording for social media content. We did presentation messaging for school assemblies in the middle school and the high school. And what was really cool is we’re actually chatting with Mary Beth and Ella. And these two are awesome student leaders on campus, we really enjoyed spending time with them. And I wanted to ask them today to share a little bit more about their prom, and the event that they hosted because I haven’t heard other schools doing it like this. And honestly, I wanted to stay I did not want to fly home back to Phoenix. I wanted to stay in Kentucky. So I guess to start, Mary Beth and Ella, will you just give us a little intro about you, do your grade, where you’re from, and then maybe a few things that you like to do for fun? 

[00:01:06] Mary Beth: Well, I’m Mary Beth, and I’m a senior at Lyon County High School. I’m planning on attending the university or first year of University. And I don’t really know what I’m going to major in yet, but I like to play soccer and guitar and all that stuff. 

[00:01:24] Ella: I’m Ella. I’m also a senior at Lyon County High School. And I’m actually attending our community college in Paducah for nursing school. So I’m going to try to get into nursing program next spring, and I play basketball and I just tried to do a lot with my church. 

[00:01:42] Jake White: Can you take us through what prom looked like at your school and what was different about it than maybe what other students experienced who just have a dance? 

[00:01:57] Mary Beth: Well, our prom, I feel like the prom itself isn’t much different than a lot of other schools. But for as long as I’ve known, our school has always done a project form, like a lot of schools do project graduation, but it’s a way for our school to keep kids out of trouble or try to keep them out of parties and things like that. So they keep us in lockdown from 12 to 5 in the morning. And there’s opportunities for students to win money. And there’s a lot of prizes and they feed you and it’s very entertaining. 

[00:02:34] Jake White: Visualize when you walk into the school, take us to what the building looks like, how it’s different, what’s available, all that stuff. 

[00:02:42] Ella: Well, when we walk in, they usually check us to make sure like nobody’s been using any drugs or alcohol. And this year they did a metal detector to make sure that everyone was coming in without any thing dangerous. But it looks like a normal school day honestly, they’ve taken all of the prom decorations down from our grand March and then set up. They had volleyball and golf ball and cornhole. So they just set up a bunch of activities for us and you walk in and they have to down one hallway and activities down another, like tie dyeing and a movie room and things like that. 

[00:03:21] Jake White: That doesn’t sound like a normal school day to me. That sounds like an amazing school day. So what did you choose to do all night out of all this stuff? 

[00:03:36] Mary Beth: So there’s a bunch of sports that we can play, like competitively, like different teams will sign up for all these different sports and like, me and my friends. We played every sport, I’m pretty sure, so we played volleyball against, two teams, or were four teams and all of the sports. But we won volleyball, kickball, and we ended up losing dodgeball. So it gave us really entertained. Each sporting event lasted about an hour. So there were three hours that we were just doing straight sports the whole time. 

[00:04:09] Jake White: That’s great. 

[00:04:13] Ella: My team and some of my other friends actually played against Mary Beth  team, the first round or the second round and volleyball for the championship. And we ended up getting second place, but it was still a lot of fun. And my team lost the first round in kickball, but there’s still a lot very entertaining to watch other teams because we get so competitive. And there’s money involved. So it obviously makes you want to like do really well, but we ended up beating them in dodgeball. So we got them back. 

[00:04:41] Jake White: I can tell, you two are not competitive at all. That’s so fun. And I love the fact that y’all did tournaments. Because when people asked me about my parties, and how do you make a fun event and a party, and that’s one of the first things I tell them, is you got to make it competitive because then you’re loud, then you’re having fun, and you’re talking trash to your friends. So it just got to have an amazing night. And I also heard that they had fundraisers to get some prizes and different things that they gave out at the end of the events, what were some of the things that were given away. 

[00:05:22] Mary Beth: So they gave away a bunch of gift cards, all of the juniors and seniors, our name for put in this basket or something. And then throughout the night, they would pick people’s names. And you would get to choose a gift card to either a restaurant or, I know, there was a hair salon, and a massage and a bunch of people or businesses from the community donated their gift cards to their stores and stuff. So everybody got at least one gift card. And then at the very end of the night, it’s like the last 30 minutes or so, they call us all down to the gym floor. And so they call out our name, and we pick a number, and each number has money behind it. So regardless, if you play no games, or like anything at all, you’re going to leave at least $50. Each number has either, 50, $100. And then there were two numbers that had $150 and then one that had $500. So everybody left with at least something. 

[00:06:28] Jake White: Wow, that’s pretty awesome. That would get me going. Very cool. And it sounds like when I listened to your event, so just to recap, you walk into the school, and it seems every hallway, the gym had sports, classrooms had different games. So wherever you went, you could do something. And even if you didn’t like sports, there was a movie room, or maybe a game room, where people could play video games or board games or cards. And so it wasn’t like the event itself. You had to bring in giant inflatables or anything crazy. But it was just giving people an excuse to get together to hang out and play games all night. You get to take over the school. And it probably feels like it’s just really special because you get the school at a different time. And everything is set up for you to have fun with your friends. Do you have any fun memories or funny memories that happened this year? 

[00:07:38] Ella: With me, it was definitely the competitiveness and kickball probably, that was probably the most well. Because it was very close at first, and then they won by a landslide. So it was just definitely something like that in which I was on a team full of like baseball players, and which they had a lot of soccer players on their team. So it was that they’re used to it. Whereas my team is usually used to hitting something, but like me playing basketball and stuff. I’m just very competitive anyway. And so I just tried to like, if there were a group of girls, I’d seen that we’re trying to drag and catch the ball and dive in front of them be like its  okay, I’ve got it because it just very competitive. But that’s probably my most exciting memory from it. 

[00:08:27] Jake White: Awesome. Do you have any memory Beth?

[00:08:31] Mary Beth:  So at the very end, it was kickball. It was my team against my sister’s team. And there was a ball where they fell out that I kicked a foul ball or like that one of our referees, so they told me to stop, but the other one was telling me to keep going. So I stopped because the one told me to stop. And so it ended up causing this really big argument between the two teams. And so one of our guys was just like, okay, she’s out. We’ll take it out. And I was just like, Are you kidding me? You’re really just going to call me out for that. And in that inning, three people hit homeruns and we beat 13 by like five points. And my sister was so mad but I thought it was hilarious that we had beat them. 

[00:09:17] Ella: It was like home run after home run. 

[00:09:22] Jake White: Wow. Don’t make Marybeth mad. That’s so funny. And to give us an idea of how many people participated, like how many people do you think went to prom, the dance and then how many went to the lock in prom if you had to guess. 

[00:09:44] Ella: Honestly, I think more people went to the lock in at prom, different people that go and not a lot of them would like to get up and dance and stuff and just have a good time. So sometimes they just sit there but there are definitely a lot more people at prom and they were close to 90 numbers almost for people to pick at the end of the night. And that was only for juniors and seniors. So there’s my dad was a sophomore. And the sophomores aren’t allowed to participate in that specific event at the very end of the night. But they are also allowed to win money throughout the night, just not at the very end. But there were at least first 80 something, so our juniors and seniors. That’s not counting sophomores or juniors that attended as well. 

“Project Prom: A Safe and Fun Alternative to Traditional Proms – Insights from Lyon County High School”

[00:10:31] Jake White: Awesome. And what I love about this so much is that I’ve been hearing stories about, people will go to prom for at half an hour or an hour, and then leave and go to these parties. So you don’t ever know what happens at those parties. That’s scary to think about. Like putting yourself in it. So the fact that you’re offered something different, and that it was so well attended, if not even better attended than the actual prom event, is pretty cool. And I think that as people look forward to different programming, for high school, that if the students aren’t really into the dance and they’re going to leave early anyway, then it’s a really smart move to say, well, then, what are you into? Are you into sports and competitions and games? Then, let’s do something like this, like a lock in and project prom, y’all did. So I think it was really cool. Do you feel like it made an impact on people?

[00:11:32] Mary Beth:  I think so. I went to prom last year, and the year before. And although the year before my sophomore year, we weren’t allowed, the school wasn’t allowed to have anything to do with prom or project prom. But the parents that put on a prom for the seniors that year, still tried to make it, fun. But my junior year, it was a lot of fun. And I knew that even if I didn’t want to go to the dance, I would definitely go back to Project Prom, just because it gives kids the opportunity to win money and be competitive and, stay up all night and eat junk food, too. 

[00:12:06] Jake White: So thank you both so much for talking with me about prom and project prom. And I hope that people listening to this, get some ideas for how they can duplicate this in their community. So for everyone listening, thank you for listening to another episode of Party Talk, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention, and we’ll see you next Monday for another episode.