Every year, the girls cross-country team celebrates coach Charlie Cutelli’s birthday with a mini surprise party. This year, there was no exception, and the team covered every desk surface in Cutelli’s room with over 600 cupcakes.

“I was talking to Yvonne about what to do for his birthday because it’s a tradition to do something. I just suddenly got this idea, like, why don’t we cover every conceivable surface in his room with cupcakes? So we did,” senior Rowan Goldie said.

Team captains Goldie and senior Yvonne Krumrey organized the event. They convinced over half of the team to bake or buy cupcakes and then help decorate the room on Oct. 11, Cutelli’s birthday.

“We got about 13 girls to come in at 6:15 a.m. They all brought anywhere from a dozen to five dozen cupcakes. It was still dark outside because it was just that early,” Krumrey said.

The girls decorated cupcakes to spell out “Happy Birthday” and placed them on Cutelli’s desk along with the other prettiest cupcakes. Goldie and Krumrey contributed the most cupcakes for the event, baking and frosting over 300 the night before.

“I stood in the hallway and called out to everybody passing the class to come in and take one, or two, or ten. I managed to get rid of them all by about lunchtime,” Cutelli said.

In previous years, the team has tried coming to school before school to decorate his room. Last year they were discovered because they left the windows blinds open and Cutelli saw them from the parking lot.

“We were busy decorating his room with helium balloons, but he must have noticed us because he ran up to the window and gave us a crazy-looking face. I guess we were kind of conspicuous,” sophomore Jordan Beveridge said.

Even though Cutelli knows that the team will do something to celebrate his birthday, he does nothing to discourage it.

“I was kind of hoping they would do something for my birthday, but I wasn’t sure how they would do it. They cupcake thing was hilarious, but because there were cupcakes everywhere, the labs in some of my classes were interrupted. However, variety is the spice of school life, so I’m glad they did it,” Cutelli said.