In many years past, Bear River’s fall homecoming has consisted of a homecoming rally, game, parade, and dance. In the 2019-20 year, however, there was simply a football game where the winners of the homecoming court were presented at halftime. No rally. No parade. And no dance.
The lack of the homecoming festivities had caused seniors to miss out on what would have been their very last fall high school homecoming because it was replaced by a Halloween themed dance, the Ghostly Gala. However, the day before it was supposed to be held, the dance was cancelled.
Many Bruins are upset at the decision of the leadership class this year and have expressed their outlook on it, such as Freshman Beau Spence.
“It’s kind of sad because I feel like homecoming is a big part of high school for a lot of kids,” he said.
Some felt like they were missing out on the regular homecoming experience.
“I’m really not for it because I like the idea of going formal,” said Sophomore Corina Shaw. “I’ve never been to a homecoming so missing another one is just ugh.”
ASB President and Senior Sarah Kennedy explained how this may affect the seniors as it was their last opportunity to participate in events like this.
“I think that people are sad about it but I don’t feel like it really affects [seniors] that much,” she said. “Also we are planning things this year for just seniors that we haven’t said anything about yet and that we’re excited about.”
Senior Chris Elias explained how he feels about not having a homecoming and Halloween dance.
“I wasn’t mad because they were having a Halloween dance and then none of them happened and now I’m a little mad,” he said. “They wanted to cut the homecoming dance and that was fine because a month before we’d had the Jungle and then they wanted to do the Halloween one and that was cool because we’ve never had a Halloween one here and then none of them happened and I’m mad.”
Leadership teacher Matt MacDonald explained why we didn’t have a traditional homecoming and what leadership’s plans for the Halloween dance would have been.
“So the main reason why is because we just had a dance two weeks prior (Jungle Dance) and we’re only allotted a certain number of dances per year,” he said. “We just felt like if you’re looking at the whole school year we didn’t want to have a dance and then another dance two weeks later and then no dance until February. We wanted to spread that out and unfortunately the way the football schedule worked out this year we were on the road for six weeks and so that was really the only time we could have done it.”
Mr. MacDonald added information about obstacles that leadership faced when planning homecoming this year.
“We still wanted to have the traditional homecoming with the court but we weren’t able to have a rally because the sound system wasn’t working in the gym and we couldn’t do the floats because we just got this brand new track,” he said. “So it’s just a different type of homecoming week.”
Although students were bitter about missing out on homecoming this year, some were still hopeful that the Ghostly Gala would turn out to be just as fun. Now that it has been canceled, students are even more unhappy.
Sophomore Hannah Ingle, who was excited about the Ghostly Gala, talked about the irritation she’s been facing.
“Leadership is just being so lazy this year,” she said. “It really sucks because first of all we missed out on homecoming and every other school had it so seeing people I know at other schools posting about their homecoming made me really sad. Second of all if they couldn’t do homecoming at least they could have the Halloween dance and when that got canceled it just like wow, what is this year turning into.”
Missing out on a football homecoming dance, rally, and parade this year was really unfortunate, but missing out on the dance that would have replaced it really sucked. However, with the announcement of a masquerade semi-formal dance set for early December, Bruins are hopeful that this year’s leadership can still make this year the best it can be.
