One Pioneer Valley High School Link Crew group sports Froot Loops gear during freshman orientation tours Wednesday. 
Pioneer Valley High School Marching Band members perform during Wednesday’s freshman orientation. Classes start Monday. 
Freshmen share their names with new classmates at the Pioneer Valley High School orientation and campus tour Wednesday. 
A Pioneer Valley High School student points his Jarritos soft drink logo as his group tours the campus Wednesday. 
Freshmen and Link Crew members touring the Pioneer Valley High School Wednesday get a laugh out of each other’s costumes. 
A Link Crew leader at Pioneer Valley High School gives tips to incoming freshman during an orientation session Wednesday in Santa Maria, ahead of the new school year’s start on Monday. 
One group of incoming freshmen at Pioneer Valley High School sport a space alien theme for tours Wednesday.
With the end of summer break nearing, some Pioneer Valley High School freshmen willingly spent Wednesday morning touring the Santa Maria campus while sporting creative costumes.
Before leaving campus with their fall semester class schedules in hand, students strolled the school grounds representing Froot Loop cereal, space aliens, video games characters, and more, while student leaders offered helpful tips to the incoming ninth-graders.
Wednesday’s event marked the 11th Link Crew orientation focusing on easing freshmen nerves and having fun.
“This is our freshman orientation to basically bridge the gap between junior high and high school for our incoming ninth-graders,” said Marcie Guerra, Link Crew adviser and a PVHS ag teacher. “Just to make it as stress free as possible because they are going from a smaller school to such a large school.”
The new school year kicks off Monday for the students, faculty and staff in the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District, which includes Santa Maria, Righetti and Delta high schools in addition to Pioneer Valley.
Some 150 juniors and seniors served as mentors during the orientation event, offering assorted valuable tips such where to find help regarding their school-issued electronic tablet.
Mentors wore asking, “Who you gonna call?” with the answer “Link Crew” below a Ghostbusters logo.
The Panthers Class of 2023 has about 860 members, making it the largest since the school opened in 2004, Guerra said. Approximately 700 attended the orientation.
“We get an amazing amount. This is probably the biggest one we’ve ever had,” Guerra said. “We couldn’t believe it.”
The event was voluntary and included filling freshmen in about all the extracurricular activities available on campus.
Guerra said she has heard from leaders that they become interested in activities or sports and gained new friends because of their own Link Crew orientation.
“We really do make a connection with our campus that day,” Guerra said, adding that some students arrive expecting to be bored.
“It’s a fun-filled day,” Guerra said. “It’s not what they expect.”
Planning for the Link Crew orientation starts each spring with selection of the juniors and seniors to serve as leaders, representing the entire student body population, she added.
“We gear up when everybody else is ending school,” Guerra said. Freshmen are contacted during the summer and reminded of the orientation event.
Link Crew’s connection doesn’t end when school starts. Mentors check in with students throughout the year, Guerra said.
One leader, senior Cresencio Chavez, said he arrived feeling nervous but was excited to share about his high school experiences. He didn’t have the chance to attend the orientation when he began his high school career, he said.
“As a a freshman I was kind of lost so I would have gone through this experience,” he said.
Yareli Cruz, a junior serving as a leader, said she found Link Crew helpful in showing her about campus life.
“I felt more comfortable in myself and confident knowing that I had met other freshmen as well, and I wasn’t alone so I would walk into a class and I would immediately recognize other faces,” she said.
The campus in northeast Santa Maria has been abuzz with activity this week.
Science teachers hosted a two-day science program for incoming freshmen heading to Pioneer Valley, Righetti and Santa Maria high schools. The program culminated with building and launching model rockets on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, students weren’t the only ones taking tours, as the district’s new teachers got off a yellow school bus for their own orientation program.
More than 16,000 students in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District also kick off their new school year on Monday morning.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.