After months of suspicion and anticipation, Project Greyhound is ready to begin.

Project Greyhound, currently planned to begin in late February, is a competition designed to bring the CHS community closer together, as well as to bolster school spirit.

“This is really just a pilot semester for what we hope is going to be a year-long event,” Activities Director James Gladstone said.

Gladstone, along with Assistant Principal Ryan Luhning, is in charge of Project Greyhound.

The competition will consist of teams collecting points through a series of activities and challenges. Many of the challenges are intended to make the students feel more connected to CHS by getting them to attend extra-curricular activities they wouldn’t normally attend.

“For example, we could say get 20 people to attend the performing arts play on this night and for proof of their attendance, take a selfie with, say Mr. Luhning, and post it to social media with the hashtag #ProjectGreyhound,” Gladstone said.

In addition to these challenges outside of school, there are fun lunchtime activities planned for Fridays or Mondays.

Based on how well a team completes a challenge, they will receive points. A running tally will be broadcast on the TV in the commons.

“That way people can keep track of where their team is at in comparison to the others,” Gladstone said.

Luhning says that in addition to competition between teams, there will be incentives for teams to get points.

“Using elements of game theory, we will track points throughout the year and incentive teams as they progress,” Luhning said.

To get the team creation process started, Gladstone invited a number of seniors to be team leaders.

“We are hoping to get the upperclassmen leadership there to kickstart it,” Gladstone said.

Project Greyhound is currently going through a recruitment period before being available for general sign up.

“Right now, people are out recruiting in the hallways, trying to get people from different grade levels,” Gladstone said.

After the team leaders have finished recruiting, Gladstone will get an idea of the number of students interested in Project Greyhound. For the students interested in participating who do not get recruited, there will be a period of open sign up. The students who sign up as part of the open sign up will be placed on a team.

Each team will ideally contain students of all ages. “Project Greyhound is designed to be something to increase a camaraderie between the grade levels,” Gladstone said.

In addition to collaboration between grades, Project Greyhound was also created as a way to bolster school spirit, as well as an in-school release from academics.

“There’s so many people here doing so many things and doing them so well that sometimes there needs to be that avenue for release,” Gladstone said.

Much like regular extra-curricular activities, Project Greyhound will get students to meet students they would not normally meet. Luhning describes it as “another way to offer students fun ways to get to know one another as well as staff members in a safe, competitive environment.”

The name Project Greyhound had been making students wonder if there was some kind of secret military operation in CHS, but according to Gladstone, the name “just came out of nowhere.” They were considering Greyhound Games, but that sounded like something done at other schools.

“A lot of places do a lot of different things as far as this type of activity, so we mixed all these ideas from other schools, from other districts into one that we thought would fit Clayton best,” Gladstone said.

Gladstone hopes that Project Greyhound will continue past this semester. He hopes that it can be a legacy that the class of 2015 can leave behind.

“We are really excited about it. Everyone that is involved hopes that this becomes an aspect of the school that everyone wants to participate in and it really is absorbed and becomes a part of the school,” Gladstone said.