To many people, their Homecoming Dance is a night to remember. It’s one of the nights throughout the school year when students can wear dresses and suits and party with other Lakers.
Homecoming is also significant for Laker Pride and helps make current students and faculty feel like they are a part of their school community. Not only does the night help connect the current students, but it also helps reassure alumni that their legacy of school spirit lives on.
The Homecoming tradition dates back to the early 1900s when colleges hosted parties and dances to celebrate the football season and for alumni to visit their alma mater. In the 1930s, a Missouri student newspaper wrote about the first-ever idea of Homecoming. They didn’t necessarily create the idea, but they created an annual reunion on the day of an important football game.
Prior Lake, like thousands of other schools, celebrates this idea. Nick Ingles, English teacher and Student Council advisor, believes that Homecoming is such an important week for the school and explains its importance in one word, “Tradition.”
Many anticipate certain events this school year, whether the Homecoming game or all the spirit week events such as Powderpuff or Powderpoof. However, the Homecoming Dance is the event that everyone waits for throughout the week.
A committee of Student Council members plans the dance. In previous years, the theme depended on the overseer in charge of the homecoming dance. Last year, senior Madelyn Malmberg chose the theme Lights Camera Homecoming. This year, Sarah Kelm was the committee’s lead for the dance.
Sarah, the Secretary of the Student Council, and her committee executed it flawlessly, choosing this year’s theme “Once Upon A Homecoming.”
The committee decorated the field house with many decals and decorations including flowers, vines, lanterns, and butterflies. The mixtures of pink, purple, and green all helped articulate a design that gave a springy and ethereal feel to the dance.
The entire dance takes a couple of months of planning. Back in July, the committee, Kelm, Maren Buettner, Haydee Delgado, Lucy Gores, Nola McRaith, Addi Petschl, and Ryan Thue, created mood boards to develop ideas for the theme.
In the months leading up to the dance, the committee plans and emails companies to buy decorations and services. Once the school year starts, final plans and purchases are made.
During the night of the dance, students entered the building well put together in dresses and suits. The night was full of kids storming the floor in the mosh pit, hanging out with friends, lining up for the traveling photo booth, or hanging out at the tables on the upper floor near the concession stand.
Some liked the dance because of the music, taking pictures with friends, and the decorations. Everyone dancing and singing along to songs like “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction contributed to the overall vibe of togetherness.
Many students, especially seniors, value Homecoming because it is their last year to do something like this. Ryan Thue, the President of the National Honor Society and a member of the Student Council, said that she believes Homecoming was essential to her “because it’s important and it’s a good way to start the senior year in a good spirit.”
For Kelm, Homecoming means a lot “because I’m a school spirit person. At dances, it’s a time where everyone can be themselves. No one’s watching you; everyone is enjoying their time with everyone else.”
“It’s a night where some students may not celebrate school spirit a lot, but at the homecoming dance, it’s a night where everyone is unified in a way, and I see individuals talk to one another more than they usually do. It’s a fun atmosphere, and I feel much pressure is off because you come from photos, dinner, and the game, but the dance is a time to have fun,” Kelm said.
Ingles also believes that if an event is well organized, then people feel like their time is valued. The more effort and energy put into ensuring it’s a fun and engaging event, the more people are willing to participate, so it builds off year to year.
Ingles expressed his feelings about his earlier years as the Student Council Advisor as he said, “I remember some of my first years having very little idea how to do some of the things we were doing, but you take what you do that year, learn from it, and continue to grow. When it comes to Homecoming, every year, you have a new group who have never done it before. If the kids ahead of them continue to be excited about those traditions that get passed down, the new kids will be excited about these things they’ve never experienced.”
Freshmen coming into the high school this year will experience many of their first high school events ever. Ingles said this would be “their first time attending a homecoming dance and their first time attending the homecoming football game. There’s something special and new about that every year.”
One of the events during Homecoming Week was the royalty bus tour on Wednesday. This year, Ingles said, “We brought the royalty, the band, the cheerleaders, the football players, and the more kids we bring in the future, the better. When we were younger, we remember those tall kids who came into the elementary schools and visited. Some of those kids are now in that role, and that’s unique and fun.”
Homecoming is a fun way to interact with everyone and have a common goal: dress up for Spirit Week days, have fun at the pep fest, participate in things like royalty, Powderpoof, or Powderpuff, cheer at the football game, and dance the night away with friends at the Homecoming Dance. It’s a great way to get to know people at the beginning of the year and show Laker Pride.
