Senior Casey Brown becomes anxious and excited as homecoming comes closer and closer. She knows students look forward to the spirit days, pep rally, the game and even the dance as she takes her time placing each piece of tape while decorating the hallways. 

What students don’t realize is that many different components go into the week of homecoming. The Leadership class begins preparation for homecoming over two weeks before the actual game. They initiate decoration by finding poster ideas, creating them and  with making the spirit day themes for the school.

The Varsity Cheerleading team originally decorated the sports lobby instead of the entire school.

“The leadership class of 2008 decided they wanted to take over decorating for homecoming because they wanted to make it bigger and better,” U.S. history teacher Corey Baird said. 

Over the past 15 years, the class has grown to decorating the entire school along with becoming more student led. 

“Leadership is mainly student-led which allows the students creative freedom for the most part” senior Alaina Kellenberger said, who plays an active role in her leadership. class. “I like the freedom and creativity because I’m not good with sitting down and doing book work, but this allows me to bring my ideas to life in my own way.”  

The class has 21 people, meaning each and every person has to participate in order for the plans to come to life. All students enrolled in the class are required to stay after school before Friday night’s homecoming game to decorate the school. 

“Although all students are required to attend decorating, not all students participate which puts stress on others, ” senior Kaden Carpenter said, one of many leadership members.

Because it takes two weeks to accomplish decorating and prepping for the assembly, students are finding it stressful and hard to get everything done in such a short time.

“I was at the school for about four and a half to five hours the night of decorating to make sure everything was done correctly and cleaned up after. We definitely underestimated the amount of work we had but it all worked out,” leadership member and senior Zane Whitt said. 

In addition to decorating the school building and hallways, leadership also plans the assembly that all students attend in the gymnasium.

The leadership team begins the homecoming assembly planning at least one week in advance in order to have a successful gathering. The team organizes games, announces fall sports teams and put together a song playlist to line up with the announcers. 

“It takes a lot of communication and organization to make everything run smoothly,” junior Megan Mackinder said, who is one of several students that plans and coordinates the assembly.

Without good communication amongst leadership, the assembly can easily fall apart.

“We try our best to make sure this assembly is well planned because it is arguably the most important one of the school year,” senior and leadership affiliate Clarissa Hill said.