Peacock principal gets soaked to raise money for new mascot costume

Ask any middle school principal and they'll tell you their job has its share of challenges.

Like making sure all your teachers and students are striving to get better each day. Like making sure your school is a safe and welcoming place. Like addressing small problems before they become big ones.

Now in his third year as principal at Peacock Middle School in Itasca, Brian Faulkner deals with stuff like that all the time.

But on a recent November day, he faced a new challenge, and this one sent shivers - and cold water - from the top of his shaved head all the way to the tips of his toes.

Its become something of a tradition, it seems, for Peacock students to toss a friendly challenge Faulkner's way each school year. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Two years ago, for example, he agreed to don a long purple wig if his students raised money to support Red Cross efforts to help victims of an East Coast hurricane.

Last year, the challenge was set aside while everyone at the school rallied to raise money to help those who were in the path of devastating downstate tornadoes.

This year, members of the Peacock Student Council came up with a new challenge for their principal. It was simple, really: If the kids could raise $100 to put toward buying a new costume for the school's mascot (more about that later), Faulkner would let them dump cold water over his head in a version of last summer's Ice Bucket Challenge.

Faulkner not only agreed, he said he'd match any money the students raised.

The kids responded by collecting roughly $124 to replace the current costume, which kind of resembles a knight who is a few years past his prime.

Nobody seems quite sure how the costume materialized in the first place, especially since the mascot is supposed to be a Charger (you know, a horse sprinting into battle). But, suffice to say, the costume has seen better days (and knights).

So last week Faulkner slipped into some appropriate clothing - are those shorts you're wearing, Mr. Principal? - climbed inside a blowup pool during an all-school assembly in the Peacock gym and braced for what he called the "Drenching Challenge," which included plenty of water and enough ice to guarantee it was really, really cold.

"It was a blast," Faulkner says. "We had thought about just doing it on video, but I said I wanted to do it live."

Turns out he wasn't the only one who left the gym a little wetter - OK, a lot wetter - than when he arrived.

Six other faculty members - Doug Anderson, Jason Crockett, Tim Loest, Randy Okrzesik, Dan Peel and Bryen Travis - also submitted to a drenching, and some of them, Faulkner says, got it a lot worse than he did.

"It was great to see the expressions on their faces," he says.

Once he gets the water out of his ears, Faulkner says the next task will be to start the search for a new mascot outfit - preferably one that looks a little more like a brave and gallant steed and a little less like a really pooped Sir Lancelot.

There's no timetable for making the purchase he says, but he doesn't want to wait too long because there are already rumblings in the Peacock hallways that students are preparing another challenge for later this school year.

And, as any middle school principal will attest, you've got to be ready for anything.