Home Sweet Homecoming

T-Wolves Celebrate with Dress Up Days, Football Wins

Senior Gavin Reid lays down in his substitute backpack, an inflatable pool filled with his school supplies. Reid had to bring the entire pool into the classroom for “Anything but a Backpack Day.” “All of my teachers were kind of like, ‘why?’ Every teacher I brought it into, they were like ‘how are you going to get this in there?’” Reid said. “They were like ‘I can’t have you leaving it out there cause I don’t want your stuff getting stolen,’ and so they would just say ‘okay, bring it in.’” (Photo Courtesy of Grace Courtright)

Cyrus Van Sickle, Reporter
October 7, 2022

Homecoming officially ended on Sept. 23, and it passed with a variety of notable events – mixed with some confusion.

One of the first events that occurred was the Homecoming dance. Here, students got to hang out with friends, play arcade games, take pictures and dance together with a live DJ. According to sophomore Sofia Deleon, this year’s Homecoming had some differences from prior years.

“Last year it was a lot of dispersed people, and it was in groups instead of all together on the dance floor, and then a lot of people were rude last year,” Deleon said. “This year people were nicer, but then again, this year a lot of people didn’t go. This Homecoming was a lot of fun, because I kind of made it that way; A lot of people were like ‘oh, this is gonna be boring’ and I was like no why make it that way, you know? Instead of just being ‘bleh,’ you can always be ‘yay’, you know what I mean?”

Each day of the week following the Homecoming dance had a separate theme, whether that be dressing up as popular celebrity Adam Sandler, pitting the upper and lowerclassmen against each other with the bikers vs. surfers dress theme from the popular Disney movie “Teen Beach Movie” or Wednesday’s “Anything but a Backpack” day. This Wednesday theme involved bringing anything as a substitute for a backpack, which ranged from grocery bags and luggage to even shopping carts for some. Senior Gavin Reid decided to take it a step further, and brought a rectangular inflatable pool he could fit in. Throughout the day, Reid said he had many struggles and reactions to his  substitute of a backpack, but had little regret about the decision.

“It was really a pain; there’s the green direction signs, and if you’re holding it above your head it would always hit those [signs], and then getting it through doors, you have to turn it on its side, and that would risk stuff falling out of the side,” Reid said. “[I got] a lot of staring, a lot of videos, a lot of pictures, a lot of  ‘oh, I like your backpack.’ I just thought it would be funny, honestly. I saw it and was like ‘okay, what if I just bought this to school for the backpack?’”

The theme on the day of the Homecoming game was “Green Out,” in which one would wear either a green-colored outfit or, for students like senior Kylie Curnutt, the traditional Homecoming overalls. The Homecoming overalls are a tradition saved for senior year, in which they will buy and customize their own pair of overalls to celebrate becoming a senior.

“I’ve always, since freshman year, loved looking at all the overalls that all the seniors decorated and thought it would be really fun,” Curnutt said. “I just sat down and it took me a couple hours to decide what I wanted to do, and I looked on Pinterest and I saw some stuff on TikTok, and that’s kind of where I pulled inspiration from. It probably took me around 10 hours or so in total, just cutting out all the fabric letters individually, and then I completely glittered the top half of them, and that took a really long time to actually figure out and then execute.”

From left to right, senior and second runner-up Kate Newman, former Homecoming queen and 2012 alumnus Bailey Kramr, former Homecoming king and 2012 alumnus Cameron Kramr, senior and Homecoming king Carver McDonald, senior and runner-up Ryan Taylor and principal John Sloan pose for a photo at the Homecoming football game. (Photo Courtesy of Erin Pish)

‎The themed week led to the main event, the Homecoming football game which would reveal the winner of the Homecoming court. A decision was made, however, that there would be only one winner, instead of both a king and queen as is traditionally done. This was something that senior and runner up Ryan Taylor, who ran with senior Audrey Johnson, said he didn’t expect.

“I was honestly more sad that Audrey didn’t win than she was sad that she didn’t win,” Taylor said. “The whole point of Homecoming is to win a king and queen, and they didn’t have us do that this year, which was kind of a bummer.”

Regardless, the results showed that senior Carver McDonald was crowned the Homecoming king, with Taylor the first runner-up and senior Kate Newman the second runner-up. Prior to the single-crown decision, Newman was McDonald’s running mate. McDonald said he experienced a great deal of excitement and happiness from winning Homecoming, especially after a long week of waiting and nervousness.

“I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen, and it happened to be me,” McDonald said. “Shoutout to the people who inspire me, y’all are the best to me. Anytime I get that crown, I get that inspiration and I feel official to be a king.”