It was another successful food drive at Kentlake High this year, where students were able to collect 4,500 cans of food.

The collection, explained leadership adviser Rick Chance, exceeded expectations.

With a goal of 4,000 cans, the food drive brought in limited donations during the initial weeks of collection, according to junior Neil Smith.

“It started out fairly slow,” Chance said. “I was a little worried.”

As the weeks went on, however, donations started to pick up, thanks to the school bracket system, which was created in 2008 by former Kentwood ASB president Kevin Massimino. Inspired by the NCAA tournament style bracketing system, the school posts the results of each classroom after every collection session so that they can see how they compare to the rooms they are competing with.

Junior Amy Linderman said the competitiveness helped rally the students during the final weeks.

“A lot of the classes competed,” she said. “They were really excited about it. The competition got really intense, so the teachers started to give them extra credit. I feel like it was very successful.”

Linderman also said the food drive suffered initially due to a lack of exposure and advertising, which they intend to correct next year.

“Once we got more people started to bring in more, we kind of made it exciting and we offered more prizes than we did last year,” she said.

“We’re just trying to raise as much food as we can,” Smith said.

They also extended the food drive by a week to allow more donations to come in. The donations will be given to the Kent Food Bank.

In addition to canned food, Chance said students brought in other nonperishable items.

“One of my leadership kids brought in a hundred things of tooth brushes,” he said. “Which is great, because that’s what the places were asking for.”

Next year, Linderman said, they hope to raise 5,000 cans.