Students enjoying hamburgers and hotdogs at the cookout. photo taken by Shana Saint-Phard
Is this new club worth the hype?
At Thomas Jefferson High School, there are over 30 clubs and activities and one of them is Grill Club. Grill Club meets once a month at TJ and the members grill anything people can think of, but some examples are hamburgers, hot dogs, and much more. This club started this year and from the first day they started off a little bit differently than other clubs. On the first Friday of school this year, junior Keegan French brought a portable grill to school, put it in the back of his car, and cooked hamburgers.” He and his friends had the idea to put the grill in his own car but he said it was more than that, “It looked like everybody was vibing and having a good time.” However, the members want to make it more than just grilling. The group of junior and sophomore boys and girls want it to be a place where people can just talk to one another and have a good time. Both co-founders have expressed multiple times that anybody is free to join Grill Club at any time. From outside looking in, this club is very friendly and if anybody wanted to join, they would welcome anybody with open arms.
Even though this club seems amazing, there are a couple of flaws. To start, this club doesn’t even have an actual grill yet and they only cooked pre-cooked foods. Junior Andrew Burns, one of the main members in Grill club stated, “We need to create a more consistent schedule,” and he also mentioned how they only meet once a month. However, both boys agreed that it will change to once a week soon.
A typical meet up at this club is pretty much sitting back in a lawn chair or standing around and letting the grills do all the work for them. Junior Shana Saint-Phard wrote about how this grill club first started and it talks about how all of the TJ administrators got involved as well. Assistant Principal Andrew Skari had a hamburger and thought it was a blast and so did many others. For this first meeting, there were around 30 to 40 people who were getting food from the grill and everybody enjoyed it. Many of the juniors made hotdogs and hamburgers for each other and they also had condiments. One of these juniors was Junior Max Hauer who had two hamburgers and a hot dog and is an official member of Grill Club. He said he enjoys whenever they grill because everybody is just talking with their friends about whatever and this feels like a tailgate with all of his friends. He also said that even though he didn’t know everyone there, he was able to get to know new people each time he went to their meetups in the parking lot.
This club is different from the rest, and as a brand new club this year that was created by students and teacher sponsor Jason Klimzak, it is working out better than expected. This club is unlike any other. This club uses food and grilling to bring people together which is something that many people haven’t heard about, and the club has more of a family feel and everybody is super nice. All in all, this club is very fun for its members and if anybody at TJ is wondering if they should join, they definitely branch out and meet some new people.
