School dances are a safe way we can hang out with our fellow classmates and make memories that will last a lifetime. Some would say it’s not worth the time, effort and money that it takes to make these dances occur, but many of us think otherwise. We love going to school dances, getting all fancied up and hanging out with friends. I sometimes don’t join in on the group dances but if it’s a good song and my friends and I are huddled up in our own little group I’ll bust a few moves or so.

  However, these teenage rituals will only be around as long as we support them.

  Once we arrive back to school in the fall, the football season starts up. Our first dance of the school season is Homecoming it typically happens in the middle of football season. After football season is over, basketball come to a start. We annually would have a Courtwarming dance but things changed last year when the Student Council only made $3 off of the dance. Students didn’t go to the dance because they choose another way to celebrate Warsaw High’s varsity team win. This year, some students were upset that we didn’t have a Courtwarming dance anymore, especially incoming freshmen who have been looking forward to high school dances. This goes to show us that if we fail to support these celebrations, some of our cherished dances will become a thing of the past – and so will the potential for some great high school memories.

  Many of our school dances are very well attended.  This year at Homecoming, we broke our own record of how many students attended with 205 students; at Echoes last year, roughly 138 students attended, and at last year’s prom 185 students attended.

  As spring rolls around the corner so does a chance to make more high school memories at the traditional semi-formal Echoes Ball on March 12 and the formal Prom on April 23. At the Echoes Ball, the entire student body will be invited to wear semi-formal attire, such as cocktail dresses and dress shirts and slacks. When the school year starts to come to an end juniors and seniors are able to participate in prom. Prom is a formal dance but is just for upperclassmen unless an upperclassmen invites a underclassmen to join them in the dance.

  “My favorite memory from prom was watching my best friend, Briar Nelson, get crowned prom queen,” Wildcat editor-in-chief Makayla Mais said.    

    Some might think that high school dances are not an important part of the teen experience. Some teens feel dances (especially the semiformal Echoes and formal Prom) don’t seem like they are worth the money and time.    The tradition behind school dances are very important to us and our school. Students were heard complaining about Courtwarming dance being taken away, but is that fair? If the students want dances to continue then they have to continue to go to the dances.

   Homecoming, a tradition of welcoming back alumni of a school, occurs in the form of our Football Homecoming and Basketball Courtwarming. Basketball was our first homecoming our school didn’t have a football team until the 80’s after that we started having two homecomings. Later on homecoming stayed for football and we changed basketball’s homecoming to courtwarming. Ozark Echoes is like Winter Formal to other schools. Echoes has been around along time, it happened after the creation of our school yearbook in 1950’s. Echoes was originally just a fundraiser for the yearbook and soon changed to a Warsaw High tradition but still continuing to get funds for the yearbook.