With COVID school closures, climate change and ugly politics making the US a hellscape this winter, it would seem there is no room for the innocent fun of years past. But wait! The Mr. & Ms. Timberwolf Pageant lives on, giving us a small taste of the positive antics that used to be part of daily life at TuHS. 

The Mr. and Ms. Timberwolf Pageant began just after we returned from Winter Break. Partners with something in common, such as Mr. and Ms. Basketball, compete against other teams to raise money for Doerbencher’s Children’s Hospital. Doernbecher is a hospital in downtown Portland that provides life-saving medical care for kids. 

Mr. and Mr. Assemblies David Jones and Aaron Lakeman explained their motivation behind signing up for the pageant. 

“I know that we both wanted to do it at first. We weren’t exactly sure who we were going to do it with yet, and then it definitely took a while to plan, but when we both got together and really started thinking about it, we knew we had a really wide range of people who knew us and wh

o would donate to us,” Jones said. “Having all those people back us up was really appealing to us.” 

The assembly duo touched on their experience with spreading the word about their involvement.

“The biggest thing we have used is probably social media and [mainly] Instagram. We have also done a lot of texting with family members and [going] door-to-door to some 

neighbors that we really know and just asking for money,” Lakeman explained, “but I think the biggest involvement is through social media and Venmo. Those have been our biggest ways we have raised money.” 

Mr. and Ms. ASB, Naasei Lynn and Molly Miller, spoke on their experience with Mr. and Ms. T and how they chose their theme. 

“Well, each year our ASB class kind of tries to do a Mr. and Ms. ASB, and Naasei and I wanted to step up to the plate to fill that role. We feel like we have good charisma and we can catch the eye of a good amount of the student body, so we decided just to be Mr. and Ms. ASB and show some spirit of our ASB class,” Miller said. 

For both Mr. and Ms. ASB and Mr. and Mr. Assemblies, the COVID-19 pandemic and online school have put a damper on their physical fundraising. Both pairs have continued to spread the word despite online school using social media and other distanced forms of communication. 

“So in past years, the process was able to be a lot more advanced and intricate compared to this year given the current circumstances re

garding COVID-19,” senior ASB officer and one of the pageant organizers Noah Gilbertson said, “In past years, we had more op

portunities, like being able to take the contestants down to Doernbecher’s Hospital to actually tour and interact with some of the people there.” 

Despite the challenges COVID-19 has posed, the contestants have persevered and made the most of their situation. Donations for Mr. and Ms. Timberwolf will be accepted up until Friday, Feb. 11, when the pageant takes place. Timberwolves, do not forget to donate!