With the first semester coming to a close, Bear River High School began the process of welcoming future Bruins into the Bruin family.

Every year, Bear River High School holds an event called Future Bruins Day where eighth graders from all over Nevada County are invited to tour the Bear River campus to check out what fun, exciting events are to come for incoming freshmen of Bear River.

“The purpose of our Future Bruin Day is to show all the eighth graders what Bear River has to offer,” said Activities Director and Leadership Teacher Matt MacDonald. “When they get here they go into our theater for presentations from different electives and departments, then they go over to our gym for our rally where they see the cheerleaders perform along with our dance team, then they have lunch and our leadership class takes small groups on tours around the school, showing them different parts of the campus.”

Senior Hope Chylewski gave her opinion on how to improve Future Bruins Day

“I would try to get the whole school involved instead of just a handful of students,” she said. “I think if the whole school was involved then it wouldn’t be as scary when they come into high school.”

Another student agreed.

“I think there should be more time to meet up with high schoolers, maybe eat lunch with them,” said Freshman Madison Albee. “That way the incoming freshman feel a little more welcome, and comfortable here at Bear River.”

One student gave his thoughts on what he thinks would encourage the incoming freshmen to be enthusiastic about high school.

“I would try to encourage other departments and classes to participate,” said Senior Evan Naves. “I think that it will help them find passion [for the school].”

Senior Dylan Sinclair explained how Future Bruin Day has changed since he was in eighth grade.

“It’s gotten a little more fluent instead of stop and go stop and go,” he said. “Also our rallies have gotten a lot better. The base of Future Bruins Day has gotten a lot better.”

Naves also provided how his experience differed from these past few Future Bruins Days.

“Everyone has gotten shorter,” he said. “Every year it gets more and more exciting. Eighth graders come to Bear River with lots of spirit. My favorite part every year is the performances each art puts on: Cheerleading, Dance, Starlite…”

A couple freshmen provided their own input on their Future Bruin Day.

“I think it went pretty good, I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect at first, because I was kind of skeptical about the whole trip over to Bear River,” said Freshman Caitlin Parker. “Overall the experience was pretty good.”

“I really enjoyed the rally, it was way better than what we were used to because Magnolia’s rallies aren’t good,” said Albee. “It was my favorite part.”

Sinclair offered some advice for upcoming Future Bruin Days.

“I would try to get more schools to come, I know we have like 4 schools coming but it’s mainly Magnolia,” he said. “I would try to broaden our search and try and get more schools to come to check out our campus.”

Parker recalled her favorite memory from her Future Bruin Day.

“My favorite part about my Future Bruin Day was in the rally, the dance class performed a dance,” she said. “It was really beautiful and amazing to watch.”

Sinclair shared a memory.

“I remember from when I was in 8th grade and we came over here for Future Bruins Day,” he said. “The rally game that they did that day was a bunch of eggs were hard-boiled and one of them was raw, and they had to find the raw one by cracking them on each other’s heads.”

Mr. MacDonald shared his favorite part about Future Bruin Day.

“Every year I worry about not getting everything put together in time and something going wrong,” he said. “My favorite part is seeing everything coming together and just watching how good it looks and seeing all of our hard work paying off.”