From the Spirit Week (Oct. 6 – 10) to the dance on Oct. 11, Homecoming is an occasion that affects the majority of the LHS population and allows the students to show their school spirit.
Starting off Spirit Week is the hallway decorating, which volunteers from every class participate in. Ms. Andrea Lara, the head of Student Council, who’s in charge of Homecoming, describes the changes: “The hallway decorating, . . .we’ve moved that to be all downstairs. Usually we’ve kind of spread it out, and I don’t think it packs as much of an impact because it’s all spread out.”
The Homecoming Spirit Week varies from year to year. This year, Monday starts off the Spirit Week with the theme of Villebillies. Tuesday is Beach Day, and since there is no school on Wednesday, there is also no assigned theme for the day. Thursday is Wildcat Spirit Day where people will dress up in orange and black, and some may come to school with face paint and/or body paint on. The last day of the Spirit Week, Friday, is House Wars between the classes where the classes represent the colors of the Hogwarts House assigned to their grade.
Depending on how dedicated each class is to the spirit week, they will be awarded spirit points, which will be added up and tallied, and the class with the most points will earn the Spirit Cup, which is the real-life equivalent to the Triwizard Cup mentioned in the J.K. Rowling’s fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
This year, the theme is Harry Potter, and the classes represent each of the Hogwarts Houses. Representing the color red, the seniors will be Gryffindor, the juniors, as Slytherin, are green. The sophomores will be Ravenclaw and therefore will wear a purple-blue, and the freshmen, Hufflepuff, will wear yellow.
The Homecoming assembly, which the Spirit Week leads up to, takes place in the gym after a shortened school day on Friday, Oct. 10. That is when the Sweet Sixteen (16 senior girls voted by their peers) compete for the title of Homecoming Queen. The Homecoming Queen of 1963 (who graduated in 1964) will be here to crown the winner.
In the past, there were the Homecoming walk-ins to look forward to, but they have been changed because of inappropriate behavior shown during a few of the walk-ins that made teachers and students uncomfortable. Instead, the girls will be seated in the gym before the assembly starts.
“Each of the sixteen girls will have their own video package bio. I think it’s because they are being voted on at the assembly. If you’re not a senior, there’s a chance you might not know them [the Sweet Sixteen] and this gives the kids who are at the assembly a chance to get to know each girl a little bit more than what she looks like,” pointed out Ms. Lara.
This year, each of the girls will record a bit of themselves in order to give the student population – who might not personally know them – a chance to vote for them based less on appearance and more on personality.
Maddie Anderson, one of the Sweet Sixteen, is “nervous to record my video because I don’t know what to say in it, but I think it’s a good way to get to know the girls, and show the whole school our personalities. I wish it was longer so you could say more in the video because it’s only 30 seconds, but I still think it’s a good way to show a little bit about the girls.”
After the Homecoming Assembly is the all-important football game against Warren, which involves students getting dressed up in the school colors, and having a trademark of face and body paint on in order to show the world their school spirit. The Homecoming Parade is early the next day and includes people watching floats while waiting eagerly for candy to fly their way.
Senior Class Representative Jordan Rule’s favorite part of the Homecoming Parade is “seeing all the little kids get so excited to see all the floats. I love the fact that Homecoming is something the whole town gets involved in.”
The Homecoming Dance will be held on Saturday, Oct.11. The DJ will be from the company Dance Party DJs. Wanting to make sure that the kids choose the music that they want to listen to during the dance, Ms. Lara explained, “We [Student Council] are going to encourage kids to make requests online when we ask them to because Dance Party DJ want to play the music the kids want to hear, but if nobody makes any requests, then they don’t know what you want to hear, and then everyone complains about the DJ.”
The students have complained about the song selection for many different dances so this chance to recommend songs for the DJs to use could help appease the various tastes and favored songs among the school body.
In addition, the dance will incorporate the idea of the lounge — a place in the cafeteria for people to hang out during the dance and still have fun without the blaring music and the hot, sweaty gym. This idea was tried out on a small scale at Turnabout last year, and it was a hit with many of the students. Using the help of Meeting Place, a corporation that transforms spaces for dances and other high school events, the Student Council plans to use this idea of the lounge in order “to make assemblies and dances as inclusive as possible so that you don’t have to be from a certain clique, or be a certain type of kid to feel involved in your school,” Ms. Lara stated. “We’re trying to have something for everyone which I’m really proud about.”
