Homecoming season has arrived! The H-F Homecoming Dance returned to the North gym for its second year on Sept. 20 with the theme “Seas the Night.” Hopes were very high for this year’s dance, as last year’s dance developed many complaints from the student body. So much so, that a school-wide survey was sent out by sponsors and coordinators of the dance.
Last year, the school learned that students were upset with the dance because of confusing check-in process, lack of comfort, and lack of
According to Homecoming sponsor Christina Clark, “We sent out a survey to all the students and staff last fall to get feedback about the dance. A large portion of the responses questioned why Homecoming was in the North gym instead of the South gym. The reasoning behind this decision was that the summer after the 23-24 school year, new flooring was installed in the South gym and we didn’t want it affected by the dance.”
The school listened to these complaints and adjusted the dance to bolster school spirit.
This year, for a quicker and simpler method, H-F students who brought guest students stayed in line with them and were in a separate line from the remaining H-F students.
To address the lighting, H-F stepped up the experience by highlighting the walls with blue light, emphasizing the theme of the dance.
For the comfort of guests, the school also prepared by controlling the temperature.
“We also started the cooling system 3 days before the dance to ensure more comfort for the students,” Clark said.
Many other new features were introduced, including more decorative lighting, photobooths and stages for the DJ and homecoming court. This year’s homecoming seemed to redeem itself in the H-F community.
According to Junior Nadia LeSure, “This year was so much fun! The decorations were great and the DJ setup and lighting were really cool and made me feel like I was at a concert.” Vibrant blues and calming greens were an amazing color scheme for the theme of the dance and added energy to the dance floor.
Aside from the ambiance of the dance, students were pleased with the process of checking into the dance. Senior Turashian Henley, “Getting into the dance was pretty simple, even though I had to be redirected. I can definitely see why they set it up to make it more structured because it avoided a lot of chaos.”
Students also felt extremely more comfortable this year. Senior Maryjose Camargo Bibian said, “I can definitely tell that the air conditioning was on because I was never extremely uncomfortable. Another good thing was that they let us get on the elevators with a staff member, so I didn’t have to walk the stairs a lot with heels!”
For next year’s dance, the future Senior class will start planning in the Fall of 2026. It will be up to the future class to learn from the successes of this year.
