First Posted: 9/30/2014

It was anything but mayhem as the Lake-Lehman Jr./Sr. High School held its annual “Knight of Mayhem” on school grounds on Sept. 27.

The purpose of the Knight of Mayhem, according to school superintendent Jim McGovern, is to help celebrate the mission of the school district.

“The mission is based within the context of majestry, generosity, independence and community,” said McGovern. “It’s that one day a year where we all get together. It’s sponsored by our foundation and all the funds raised we put it right back into the kids to support all non-curricular activities here at the school – things like the theater, band, chorus, art clubs and things of that nature. Things that we may have taken for granted and were cut due to funding, hings that we no longer can do.”

This year’s day-long event started at 8 a.m. with a wrestling tournament in the high school gymnasium and a bake sale in the cafeteria. At noon, activities moved outside to the football stadium where there were games, concessions and a hayride.

As the day progressed, there was a cow pie bingo, a Little Miss Lake-Lehman pageant, a pie contest and a black hole challenge that featured the Lake-Lehman Mini Knights football team facing off against the Plymouth Shawnee Indians football team. The day concluded with a raffle and a showing of the “Lego Movie.”

According to McGovern, last year’s event raised $50,000 for the school to use to buy new band uniforms, an outdoor ice skating rink, sabres for the indoor color guard, put money into the theater and make payments towards the new track around the football field.

Last year, the event was to be specifically for making repairs to the football field turf, but McGovern received a grant to help with the repairs, so all money earned helped with extra school necessities.

While the day may be all fun and games for students and their families, it is “exhausting” to set up, according to McGovern.

“As soon as this is over, we’ll wait about two months and start planning for next year’s event,” he said. “It takes a long time to develop. We’ll probably need about 200 volunteers before it’s all said and done.”

Mary Jo Casaldi, secretary to McGovern, said this year the Knight of Mayhem took a different approach, saying that while they usually have it kick off the summer at the conlcusion of the school year, it was decided it would be used this year to kick off the fall.

“Last year, we had this at the end of the year and the committee thought we should try a fall theme this year,” said Casaldi. “We’re experimenting with this fall theme and we’re having hayrides this year, a pie baking contest and it’s a good time of year for a pie baking contest as apples are plentiful.”

With other fall festivals such as the Bloomsburg Fair going on at the same time, Casaldi noticed the attendance of the Knight of Mayhem was still the same as if it were held in the summer.

Now that the event is over, the committee will look back and see what experiences it learned from having a fall festival and will decide if the fall theme should continue.

“I think what we’re probably going to do is when this is over we’re going to have a wrap-up meeting to list the pros and cons of what was good about having a fall carnival and what was good about having a carnival at the end of the year,” said Casaldi. “I know this year so far, with it being the beginning of the year, there are a lot of fundraisers, kids are coming in for class pictures and sports too, parents are reaching into their wallet more at the beginning of the year than at the end of the year. I guess we’ll see when all this is over how much we really came ahead on this and that will probably be the determining factor. We’ll see what the committee has to say about it.”