In a normal school year, homecoming would have come and gone months ago with a Friday-night football game and a Saturday-night dance. This year, although COVID-19 has steamrolled over those plans, homecoming week is still taking place from April 19-23, with many key changes.

“Homecoming is really just a time where all the students get excited and rally around this one special event at our school,” Nina Guarisco, senior Student Council Executive Officer, said. “I know for a lot of students it was really disappointing that we didn’t have a homecoming in the fall because a lot of people were looking forward to spending that time with friends and having that community back and being able to celebrate something, especially now, when things can be kind of disappointing. So [Student Council] wanted to bring that spirit back to the school with [this homecoming week] and even if it’s a little different, to have a little fun.” 

Although the major difference of this year’s homecoming is its lack of a dance, Student Council has been working to maintain normalcy in every other way. This year’s red carpet/Hollywood themed homecoming week will include decorations such as sidewalk chalk outside the school, a homecoming court (renamed the Royal Bear Award for inclusivity, says Guarisco), a football game against Stevenson, other fun activities through the Student Council’s social media pages, and of course, dress-up days. 

“For each of the five days, there’s going to be a dress-up day theme,” Guarisco said. “This year, we wanted to spotlight our seniors so each of the dress-up days is going to [go along] with the [homecoming] themes that the seniors have had throughout their four years in high school, so it’ll be fun for the whole student body to get involved with that.”

As exciting as all the other planned events are, Husna Zakria, freshman Student Council member, says she is “a little bummed out for sure” that there is no dance for her first year of homecoming, “because I was really looking forward to having it in person. But of course, it’s better safe than sorry: with [COVID] and everything, I think that this is definitely the safer route.”

Even without the iconic dance, Zakria says that there is still plenty to look forward to.

“I’m especially [looking forward] to the assembly,” Zakria said. “I love seeing all the performances and all the school spirit, [and] seeing what the marching band and cheer and all those clubs have been up to. I’m not personally in those activities so it’s really fun to see that.”

With an assembly to bring the whole school together and many other events planned to rally school spirit, Guarisco says her overall hope for homecoming week is “just for it to be something fun that students can enjoy. It’ll be a little different, but [in the end], it’s just a way to bring everyone together and have some fun in the spring when people start to [fall] into that spring slump.”