Springtown High School students and staff gathered Wednesday, Sept. 24 for the annual “See You at the Pole” event. Although the early morning gathering normally takes place outside of the school, a slight drizzle didn’t stop this year’s participants, as they crowded into the halls instead.
SYATP is a global, once-a-year event that takes place every fourth Wednesday in September when students gather around a flagpole to pray for their school, friends, family and country. The movement is entirely organized, led and executed by students and this year SHS continued the tradition — leaning on each other, holding hands and lifting their community through prayer.
The initiative began in the neighboring city of Burleson when in the summer of 1990 a small group of students out on a weekend retreat felt the need to drive to area schools and pray for their friends. With no real reason other than feeling compelled to pray, that experience led them to tell others of the profound impact it had on them. Word of this spread like wildfire, and a challenge was put out by youth leaders across America to see just how many students they could get to pray simultaneously. This paved the way to the launching of the first official SYATP Sept.12,1990, amassing a crowd of nearly 45,000 students in Texas and three other states. The movement garnered so much national attention that by its second year it drew more than one million students to their respective flagpoles, nationwide.
