OPINION: Happy Homecoming

It’s homecoming season, and as a relatively young person not originally from Iowa, it’s interesting to see what goes into the celebrations for a rural Iowa town.

I’ll want to acknowledge that some of the differences might have been because we were a private school. We never had the major community support or big homecoming parade because we weren’t from one community. I had classmates that would travel up to an hour every day to get to school. None of my friends lived within 15 minutes of me. We were a student body that spanned east-central Wisconsin.

My first homecoming season in Creston was a bit of a shock. I was used to spirit/dress up days, but since we had all attended different middle schools, we didn’t involve the younger grades. Looking at East Union’s Monday theme of Dress Your Age, it’s a much different vibe of having the freshman dress up as the teenagers they already are (EU) versus having the freshmen dress as babies (my school).

That’s not to say it’s bad, I can just picture it being much more of a hassle trying to plan. I was in student council, and we were the ones in charge of creating the spirit week themes. Sometimes four varieties was hard enough, so I can’t imagine trying to include the younger grades as well.

The difference in dress code is also a major factor for spirit weeks. My school did not allow sweatpants or leggings, band shirts, open-back shoes, different-colored hair, etc. While some of these rules still held during spirit week, they didn’t all. Monday for every dress-up week we ever had was pajama day just so we could all finally wear sweats and slides. During our spirit week for Christmas, we called it “Christmas Morning” so it still fit the theme, but we always had it.

When it comes to the homecoming court, I love how involved the entire community gets here. This week, the queen candidates are meeting with various classes and doing different activities before the eventual coronation on Friday. At my school, as exciting as it was to be on the court, there wasn’t much involved. We had a big event on Wednesday night where the queen was crowned and the court was announced at the homecoming football game Friday and dance Saturday, but that was it.

While we got to dress up all week, the most important days of homecoming week for us were Wednesday (coronation and talent show), Friday (pep rally, other competitions, football game) and Saturday (the dance). Here, it seems the town likes to spread out the fun. Last weekend the students could compete in volleybrawl and powderpuff. Meanwhile, the Friday of homecoming is jam-packed with other activities, including the pep rally, coronation, a Hall of Fame ceremony, a parade and many other competitions, finishing the night off with the football game.

And then there’s the homecoming dance itself. Every homecoming dance I went to was at a different location, each featuring a different event location in about a 25-miles radius of the school. You had to dress nicely, though we generally stuck to the shorter dresses - long dresses were for prom. We had plenty of rules regarding the appropriateness of the dresses - no cutouts, x-long and x-high. We had no class photos or melas - you just took photos with your group and ate wherever you wanted.

The dance itself would start at 8 p.m., but as long as you arrived sometime before 9 p.m., you were OK to be late. I was shocked when I saw how short all the dances are in this area... only two hours? You barely get enough time to dance! Our dances would last from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m., with it being a common occurrence for a friend group to head to Perkins for some late-night appetizers.

Fast forward to the spring, and prom was basically the same sequence. The only thing different was moving from homecoming queen to prom king and going from all grades for homecoming to only juniors and seniors for prom. We didn’t have any post-prom activities like everyone seems to here, and as someone who struggles with late nights, I’m very grateful for that.

I’m happy with my dance experiences, but I am jealous of the community experience that seems to come with homecoming around here. When taking photos at the homecoming parade, it’s really cool to see so many people out and proud for their school. I might not have been a Panther growing up, but the community excitement and pride is contagious.