Jenica Pham

Once a tradition at UPA since 2010, Movie Night enabled students to watch the latest blockbuster films with their friends and family.

The films shown at Movie Night included “Wonder Women,” “Shrek,” “Maze Runner” and more. Additionally, students earned volunteer hours by selling concessions at the Snack Shack while the movies played.

The UPA Athletics Boosters originally hosted Movie Night on available Fridays of the school year to fundraise for UPA’s sports teams.

“Movie Night was not scheduled at all for this year,” Laura Grubb, co-president of the UPA Athletics Boosters since 2008, said. “It kind of was a variety of things, but mainly just lack of support [from student attendance] and donations from other parents.”

According to Grubb, although Movie Night events generated minimal attendance from the UPA student body as a whole, parents and students would still continue to volunteer.

Junior Megan Uy attended numerous Movie Night functions even before she became a student at UPA. Uy would help her mother and older brother, former UPA student Joshua Uy (‘16), sell concessions at the Snack Shack. To Uy, Movie Night became a tradition.

“The best thing about Movie Night was getting to hang out with my friends on a Friday night,” Uy said. “It’s a nice way to spend your Fridays when you don’t have anything else to do.”

As an Athletics Boosters parent who helped organize Movie Night, Grubb thought it developed a sense of community among the parents and students who did attend or volunteer.  

“It provided an opportunity for kids to really get to know each other, especially those new kids right at the beginning of [the] school [year],” Grubb said. “My greatest memory of Movie Night was really getting to know the kids that had done Movie Nights from seventh or eighth grade until they graduated.”

Disappointed that the tradition of Movie Nights ended, Director of Business Operations Dan Ordaz Jr. said the Movie Night events helped bring the UPA community together.

“Movie Night was really just a fundraiser for the UPA Athletic Boosters, but what [the UPA administration] did find was that it really helped as a unifier for the student body,” Ordaz Jr. said. “It’s more than just sports or athletes who came to Movie Night–it was a great way to encourage school spirit among all the various classes.”