Elk Grove students woke up before sunrise and participated in the annual Friday Flyover with ABC7 on Friday, October 21.

Assistant Principal Robert Murphy put Elk Grove High School on a list from ABC early in the year to give Grens this opportunity.

He said he felt the school was more than capable of doing this because “our community has a lot of school spirit [and] our staff works really hard to engage our students.” He added, “We can do these things because we have really good people here. We have good students, we have good families and we have a really, really good staff.”

Preceding the event, a team of teachers organized a campaign to get students excited for the unique opportunity. They started the #5AMCommitted on social media, hung posters in the hallways, and organized games during lunch periods.

Senior Allie Cline thought, “It was really cool how we came together as a school to bond over an experience we had. The whole atmosphere was really awesome.”

Regarding the flyover itself, band director Ron Fiorito was in charge of determining the formations that were to be made on the field, so the news helicopter saw discernible shapes.

He said, “We wanted to do the EG 50 because it was the 50th anniversary of the school. We wanted to do something current, so we did ‘Go Cubs,’ and we thought the ribbon was appropriate for the month of October and the passing of Ms. Rodheim. We wanted to make it personal for us.”

Marching band members set the formation, and the general student body filed in.

Drum major Mary Daniels said that the band members were told they were going to be doing this a week prior, but they weren’t given the specifics of the formation until the morning of. She said, “We all kinda just ran out on the field and hoped for the best.”

Daniels added while there wasn’t a lot of preparation, it wasn’t an issue because “we are the marching band, and we’ve done this so many times that it’s become second nature to us.”

About 700-800 students showed up, which was a larger turnout than expected. Murphy was more than happy with the turnout, saying, “We were hoping for 500, and to get 700-800 completely exceeded our expectations.”

Roz Varon, ABC7 news reporter, interviewed several students including seniors Jack Schroeder and Daniels.

Daniels was asked about her involvement in the school and the EG 50 formation. She was chosen to be interviewed because of her prior experience from the marching band’s trip to DC.

The formations took a decent amount of the allotted two hours, but there were some gap period where the school organized activities for the free time, but Junior Steven Tompary described the advertising for said events as “misleading.”

Tompary commented on how the school’s campaign said that there would be knockerball, but only teams from Homecoming week were allowed to play. He said, “It was a nice idea to get everyone together, but we could’ve done more in between the flyovers. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time, but I guess we could’ve done more to be entertained.”

Afterwards, the students had about an hour without organized activities. Some students went home to sleep, others attended physics review sessions and some went out for breakfast before arriving back at school.

Murphy expressed appreciation to everyone involved, including but not limited to parents, students, teachers, custodial staff, neighbor, the bus company, and the district for helping make this happen.