Albany High School confirms the end to the challenge day tradition
Sadie Nystrom and Bryn Michenfelder
Challenge day used to be a time honored tradition at Albany High School, until its cancellation for the 2024-2025 school year. Challenge day was a program where sophmores were taken out of class, along with teacher volunteers and leaders, to participate in small-group team bonding activities. For a more in-depth look at the history of challenge day, and what drove its cancellation, check out our Summer 2025 addition of the Cougar on our website!
Senior Kali Le describes her challenge day experience, saying “I think it allows you to understand and be more empathetic for people in your grade, and you obviously don’t know what everyone’s going through, and challenge day, it just gives you a little insight to what people are going thorugh.”
In an interview with AHS principal Daren McNallly in the 2024-2025 school year, he explained his hope to bring in a new program for future students, similar to challenge day. With this year coming to a close, students have been left wondering what the future of challenge day will be.
In a recent interview, McNally explained that although challenge day had many social-emotional benefits for students, “We don’t have a current plan to bring in anything else as kind of a school-wide event at this point,” despite AHS oiginally planning to bring in a replacement program.
Despite looking into many options, McNally says, “we haven’t found an alternative program that we feel really meets our needs, and we really focus more on having the S3 space and those kinds of things, try to like have it more embedded in the the school in general.”
Mental health and community resources are a focal point of the budget of the school, with some staff feeling that the resources for challenge day would make more of an impact incooroporated more into the school year, instead of focused into a three-day experience. Despite this, many students’ frustration with the cancellation of challenge day has continued.
Junior Anya Fox, who did not get to experience challenge day, says “I really wish that we did. I think it’d be so beneficial because our grade is just not that close with each other. So I feel like that would be really helpful and I also just feel like I don’t know a lot about the people in my grade.”
