Homecoming was a big hit Friday Sep. 11, when students celebrated returning to school after a long summer. Organizers were pleased with the success of the events and the amount of student participation.

  “It was a very memorable night and I thought we showed a lot of school spirit that week,” freshman Bailey Brown said.

  The organization of homecoming blossomed from the summer meetings of the student council.

   “A lot of students got involved with spirit week and we had over 200 students come to the dance, which may be a school record,¨ said STUCO sponsor Jennifer Greene.

  The first part of the celebration was spirit week. Students showed their school spirit by dressing up for themed days.Tuesday was vacation day, Wednesday was hippie day,followed by character day on Thursday, and color war on Friday.

  ¨I thought a lot more people participated this year than last year,” math teacher David Hawks said.

  When Friday finally arrived, the students with A’s and B’s and 90 percent attendance got to take the school day off to go participate in building floats for the parade downtown.

 “My favorite event of homecoming was the float building because kids got out of school and that was pretty cool,” student body president senior Austin McCall said.

   Friday, the students also got to celebrate with a game-filled assembly. Not only did the homecoming theme come into the picture when royalty candidates faced-off in “The Homecoming Games,” but it also gave the some of the other students a chance to get involved in the fun.

  All of the classes faced off in tug-of-war (resulting in victory for the senior class). There was a pop cultural quiz for the new teachers, and a class race to see which grade representative that was picked from the audience could knock over a row of water bottles first using a softball attached to their heads by a pair of panty hose. The games inspired many laughs, but what some students may say was the most amusing was seeing assistant football coach Derald Henderson taped to the football goal as a result of seniors winning the most overall school spirit of the week.

 ¨The games were interesting, but the panty-hose ball thing was really challenging,” sophomore Madison Rozzel said.

  Unfortunately, the homecoming game was a loss for the Wildcats.The game ended  (46-14) But on the brighter side of things, student council held coronation at half time.

  Seniors Raven Caswell and Austin Steenburgen were proudly crowned queen and king of homecoming. Juniors Ashlyn Yoder and Hunter Bagley were dubbed Prince and Princess.  

 “My favorite part of homecoming was being crowned with Austin,” senior queen Raven Caswell said.

  Steenburgen had asked Caswell to the event with flowers, Gatorade and a huge sign reading: ”Every king needs a queen, homecoming?”  

 Directly after the game, students headed to the cafeteria to get jiggy at the dance.The DJ cranked out tunes like “The Cupid Shuffle,” “Watch Me,” and “Teach Me How To Dougie.”

“It was like a rave,” sophomore Savannah Drake said.