Leadership prepares for early Homecoming week

This year, Homecoming week will be one week earlier, taking place from Sept. 17-21 compared to last year’s Sept. 25-29. The Homecoming and dance commissions have been hard at work to ensure this year’s preparation and dance will run as smoothly as possible.

“Since [the Homecoming game] is at Levi’s Stadium this year, we’ve just been trying to figure everything out,” Homecoming head commissioner Madison Hartmann said. “It’s been super busy, but we’re super excited.”

The earlier date led to some important changes in the preparation process.

For all grades, Move-In day, or the day that all classes begin decorating for Quad Day, will be scheduled for the week of Sept. 15 instead of in late September. In terms of decorations, class officers are already planning and laying out their designs. The senior class, with the assigned theme of “Alice in Wonderland,” is especially excited for their last quad day.

“Dances are coming along well, and we have a lot of participation there,” senior class president Nevin Prasad said. “I feel like our Homecoming will go well; it won’t be easy, but we’ll do it.”

On the other hand, freshman class officers are also excited to be leading their first Homecoming. Freshman class president Derek Hsu said that they are making good progress on their theme of “Narnia”; planned props include fake snow, Turkish Delights and lion cut-outs.

“Even with an earlier time slot and not being able to prepare over the summer, we are hopeful that [the freshman] performance will be unique,” Hsu said. “We hope our upperclassmen will enjoy it as much as we do.”

Homecoming choreographers in all grade levels are also hard at work, holding practices for their quad day dances sooner due to the earlier date.

“I was kind of shocked when I heard Homecoming was one week earlier,” junior choreographer Joanne Fan said. “But it wasn’t too bad because [we choreographers] started talking in the summer, which gave us a head start.”

In terms of the school-held Homecoming dance, Leadership is striving to make improvements to the event, and commissioners are especially concerned with how the earlier Homecoming date will affect student interest in attending the dance.

“We’re mostly concerned with ticket sales and finding a new DJ,” dance commissioner Lillian Wang said. “We want to improve from the Back to School dance.”

Overall, Homecoming choreographers and Leadership  students are hard at work to make sure this year’s Homecoming week is one of the best yet.

“I hope everyone can come to the dance because we worked really hard on it, especially the decorations inside the gym,” Wang said. “I also hope that all the freshmen can come out and experience what our Homecoming is like.”