Herndon Principal William Bates will wear South Lakes spirit wear for a week as a penalty for his school’s loss in a canned food drive competition run by the two schools’ leadership programs.

Seahawks collected a total of 1,300 cans for Fairfax County bus drivers, beating Herndon by 481 cans.

According to the FCPS Human Resources Department, the donated cans will be stocked and available for bus drivers in need year-round.

This is important because school bus drivers are typically employed part-time during the school year, meaning that they do not receive a consistent salary.

Senior Lisi Mueller devised the idea.

“We hadn’t done a food drive as a leadership class yet, and we really wanted to give back to the community,” Mueller said. “Our teachers told us about the FCPS food drive for our bus drivers and that they weren’t getting a lot of donations. We thought that a competition would be a good way to get more students involved and increase donations.”

Mueller contacted her friend Ellie Shelton, a senior SGA member at Herndon, and the two of them worked together to implement the contest.

“Lisi Mueller and I have known each other all of high school and she happened to know I was in SGA at Herndon and she brought up the idea to me,” Shelton said. “She’s definitely the one who made this all happen. Through our relationship, we had phone calls and emails made between our schools’ SGA sponsors.”

Once they had the sponsors on board, principals needed to agree on the consequence for losing.

According to Mueller, Retzer thought the spirit wear punishment was a fun idea. Bates was more reluctant.

“It was extremely hard to convince Mr. Bates to do it,” Shelton said. “He loves Herndon so much. I don’t think he’s ever even worn blue and green to school. He’s determined to win, so that has played a major role in not just getting Herndon students involved, but also the faculty and families. His optimism encourages our participation.”

Shelton hopes that the food drive competition will become an annual event.

“Hopefully this can become part of the rivalry tradition because it speaks volumes about the leadership in the two high schools,” Shelton said. “I love that we can use our rivalry to benefit the Herndon and Reston community.”