The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

The student news site of Mountlake Terrace High School in Mountlake Terrace, Washington.

The Hawkeye

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A unique legacy written in activities

Few people can say they’ve been sponsored, let alone by Sprite, the world’s largest beverage company. Senior Drake Day created the “365 Day Sprite Challenge,” where he would drink Sprite every day for 365 days with the intention of getting sponsored by Sprite.

On the 100th day, Day received an endorsement package with “a bunch of Sprite gear,” including socks, a hat, a T-shirt, sunglasses and headphones among other items.

“They pretty much let me say I’m sponsored by Sprite and I just do free advertising for them. It’s a pretty one-sided deal. I don’t really get anything out of it, but I just find it enjoyable,” Day said.

In his childhood, for the most part Day would drink root beer instead of Sprite.

So where did Day’s drive for a sponsorship come from?

When Day was younger, he played “Super Smash Bros.” on a nearly daily basis.

“The game came out in 2001, but I played when I was six or seven with my half brother. He would always bring over his GameCube, and me and my two brothers would play, and then around 7th or 8th grade I started playing this weird modded version of it, and then in 9th grade I started playing the actual version of it and started getting to trying to be good competitive wise,” he said.

Playing the game can be frustrating, but it motivates Day to work harder to excel.

I’d like to think that me being open about writing and reading maybe will give people hope that they don’t have to be hidden about it. Or maybe even just start reading.

— Drake Day

“I have a friend named Trevor [Swanson] who plays with me, and I love seeing him excel, but when he excels more than me, it definitely frustrates me. I try to use that frustration to get better. It’s worked a couple times,” Day said.

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Day and Swanson, another senior, are the co-presidents of MTHS’ Smash Club. Day also started the debate team, is one of the four captains of Teens Against Tobacco Use (TATU) and played varsity tennis all four years of his high school career.

“I know the tennis team my senior year was probably the best tennis team that’s ever walked the MTHS halls, so I think that might’ve left a decent legacy, and I’m hoping the Sprite thing might be my legacy,” Day said.

Electronic sports, or eSports, have started to become more and more popular. In fact, there are many “Super Smash Bros.” tournaments.

“The game that I play is decently big, so I definitely know that my college has a club, and that there are a lot of competitions for it,” Day said. “I definitely want to start playing more and getting more serious about it.”

While striving to be “good,” he started to play daily with a friend from Seattle. In the game, the player can choose their own character and color. A color option for the characters was Sprite-themed because professional gamers have the chance to be sponsored by teams.

“I liked to make the joke that I was sponsored by Sprite,” Day said.

Years after he made the joke, he started pondering the idea about actually being sponsored. Then, he started the 365 Day Sprite Challenge where he made a deal with himself, saying if he wasn’t sponsored by day 150, he would stop drinking Sprite everyday. Today, June 12, he is on day 223.

When doing the challenge, one of the struggles that occurred for Day was when the closest grocery store closed. Instead of going to a convenient place, Day would have to go out of his way to a different store. Day also noted troubles with captions for social media posts.

“Coming up with something funny to say every single day is kinda hard, so now I’m not posting every single day,” Day said.

After Sprite sponsored Day, they assigned projects to him.

“They just tasked me with a promposal Sprite theme, so I sent my date on a scavenger hunt all Sprite themed. That was a project I worked on for a little bit,” Day said. “I recently did a Twitter poll, and now I have to write a Sprite rap, so I’m going to start that over the next couple of days.”

Before being busy with Sprite, Day grew up in Brier until his parents divorced. Then he moved to Magnolia to live for six or seven years, primarily with his mother. When he moved back to Brier with his father in eighth grade, he didn’t make many friends and instead secluded himself for the beginning of high school.

In high school, he went from feeling “very uncomfortable in [his] freshman year and very comfortable [his]  senior year.” During freshman year, his older brother, Prescott, was a guide for him.

Towards the end of the year, he and his friends formed “Lobster Crew.” They were “always being there” for Drake Day. At the beginning of senior year, he “had all of [his] friends back, and [they] were about to be the oldest people, and being a senior is pretty awesome.”

Although extracurriculars may become his legacy, Day is most passionate about his writing.

“I think it’s a really good way, even if you don’t show it to people, to understand yourself better. And I’ve definitely written stuff and never shown it to anybody and thrown it away the next day and felt a lot better about it,” Day said.

“I’d like to think that me being open about writing and reading maybe will give people hope that they don’t have to be hidden about it. Or maybe even just start reading,” Day said.

“I know some of my friends don’t read, and I think that it’s a very good hobby just to expand horizons of all sorts depending on what type of genres you read.”

During high school, Day also “branched out and started reading more often and more publicly.”  

“Before high school, I would only read at home and wouldn’t advertise that I read a lot. I don’t really know why, I wasn’t really afraid of any backlash or anything,” Day said.

Day knew he wanted to be a writer in freshman year, but has never started a project until recently. “I started a short film with a couple of my friends. We never really got to film it, but it was still fun to write, and I’m doing a couple of projects right now too.”

English teacher Peter White also helped Day in his writing during his sophomore year. White “was the first one to really critique [his] writing in a way that didn’t make [him] feel bad. So it kind of frustrated [him] in a way that [he] wanted to get better.”

Motivation can become a struggle for Day during the writing process.

“It takes a lot of motivation to just sit down and critique your own artwork or your own creative process, and I’m trying really hard on that,” Day said.

Frustration can occur while he is writing as well. He feels it can be “pretty frustrating when you have a vision and you can’t articulate it well enough to actually write it out.”

Reading didn’t become one of his favorite hobbies until the fifth grade when Day was shown the Percy Jackson series by one of his brothers.

“After that I really liked reading and I couldn’t stop to put books down. I think that’s one of the moments that defined me because I want to be a writer when I’m older,” he said.

Day is going to attend San Diego State University in the fall “and hopefully get a degree in film and production so [he] can learn how to write for film and TV series. [His] biggest dream would be the guy to make movie and film adaptations of books that are actually good, and [he] wants to start with Eragon or the Inheritance Cycle because [he] really likes that series as a book and feel that it should get a good on screen adaptation.”

Overall, Day is “pretty excited to graduate and pretty excited to start the rest of [his] life.”

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About the Contributor
Ciara Laney, Hawkeye Staff
Ciara Laney is the Photo Co-Editor for the Hawkeye. She is enduring her third year in the organization, which she joined out of her enjoyment for keeping records of moments in life. Laney's goal in the Hawkeye is to make the audience feel a sense of belongingness in the Mountlake Terrace community. Outside of Hawkeye Laney spends time with her seven siblings. She has leadership roles in TEMPO, Key Club, ASB and JV Tennis.
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