On October 4th, Homecoming was hosted at The Reach Museum, marking a substantial change from the usual location at Moore Mansion. This year’s Homecoming theme was “After Hours”, featuring neon, vibrant, and lively decor. The Homecoming court, a group of nice girls, was first nominated by their teachers and then voted on by their peers.
The homecoming process this year started off with teachers nominating girls for the homecoming court based on good classroom manners, involvement in clubs, music programs, sports, and community service. After that, students vote for who they want as queen and princesses based on their grade. Then, the week before, on September 26th homecoming court is announced at our spirit assembly. The week of homecoming, a volleyball tournament hosted by the PHS volleyball and put on for PHS intermural teams.
Spirit week was also a big part of hyping everyone up for homecoming. Monday was neon day, Tuesday was dress as your future self day, Wednesday was jersey day, Thursday was dress up like Adam Sandler day, and lastly, Friday was school spirit day and dress in all purple and white. All the homecoming prep and hype come to an end Friday night at the football game versus Walla Walla. Before the game starts, the homecoming court cruises down the stadium ramp in nice cars like Mustangs and Corvettes.
With Homecomings, there are lots of different difficulties. ASB Advisor, Mr. Lamb, said, “I think just getting all the moving parts to synchronize, there’s just a ton of stuff. It feels like we always forget something to the very end and then figure it out. But just the schematics, making sure that the location is secure, making sure that all the activities are supervised correctly, and all the traditions stay true to our school and all that kind of stuff.”
From setting up the decorations at the dance to figuring out the venue, our ASB, alongside our Dance team this year, put on everything. Traditions like the parade float down to the stadium to “show off” the Queen and Princesses at the homecoming game.
Lamb said, “I love the march to the stadium. It used to be a lot bigger deal with a parade. All the classes would do floats and that kind of stuff. It’s been kind of downsized, but that tradition is still there.”
Some of the new elements that we have introduced this year are that we are having homecoming at The Reach Museum. Traditionally, homecoming is held at The Moore Mansion, but due to figuring out when our Homecoming football game and finding a date when we can go to The Moore Mansion, there weren’t any dates available due to wedding bookings.
Lamb said, “We were not allowed to do the Moore Mansion because they had a wedding booked. We don’t get to know what our homecoming game is going to be until like the end of the school year, based on when the football team’s going to be at home and who they’re playing, all that kind of stuff. The weekends didn’t match for us. We kind of had two choices because of how big a school we are. One, being, having it at school, and then the other one was trying a new place like ‘The Reach. Oh, perfect. It’s super beautiful. I think it’s going to be amazing.”
The Reach has been open to the public since 2014, and ever since then, The Reach has put on dances for schools. Some of the biggest challenges to putting homecoming at The Reach were getting all the moving parts to synchronize. The location, food trucks, DJ, and weather are things of that nature.
The Reaches Facility Event Coordinator, Katie, said, “My biggest challenge is just making sure that everybody’s safe. That’s kind of an outdoor area, so it’s just keeping everybody contained in one area. It’s the biggest challenge, at least for me.
Principal, Vice-Principals, Admin, and even parents worry about safety. Long meeting on how we make sure kids are safe, or how we are going to ensure kids have fun while balancing the safety of homecoming, while maintaining the safety of 400 kids.
Katie said, “Security’s one of those things that we’ve learned throughout the years of where to keep the ‘security people’ at. To make sure that everybody stays safe, because it’s dark out there, and we just want everybody to stay safe. I’m learning very quickly with homecomings that we might want to put heaters out there for people. It’s a little chilly for homecomings. That being said, for proms, since it’s spring, it can go either way. It’s either too hot or a little chilly for them. It’s just kind of dealing with the weather; that is probably the biggest challenge. For us and for the school. Trying to figure out how to keep everybody comfortable and not freezing to death or too hot. “Because if it rains or anything like that, I can’t bring everybody in. It’s not like I have a party where it’s 100 people and I could say, ‘Oh, it’s raining, you can come inside.’ It’s like, please don’t rain because I can’t have 400 kids come inside.”
Homecoming was the night to be remembered. It is a night to have fun and be with friends and significant others. It is a night for candlelit dinners on the river to eating pizza with your group of friends. It is a night to pull up to the dance in mustangs or in your 2002 “beater”. It is a night to dance the night away or to be a wallflower. It is a night to glow.
