Planning the Homecoming Parade

By Hania Raza '24

The homecoming parade has become a school wide tradition in recent years. Everybody looks forward to seeing floats and decorations, but there is hard work going on behind the scenes to make this parade happen. 

SCA Advisor Susan Wenk,  played a big role in planning the parade. Last year, when COVID-19 hit, some of the homecoming traditions were canceled to keep everyone safe. The pep-rally was canceled, so Wenk, along with the SCA, thought of the parade as a new, outdoor tradition. 

“We tried to think of something unique that we could do, that could be outside, and it would be safe. So the parade started last year and it went so well,” Wenk said. “The upper school students like it, the lower school students just cheer so much, and they get so excited, and the middle school really liked it.”

Because this parade is a school-wide event, the theme of Cars, the movie, was chosen. It came down to two people, Dylan England ‘23 and Cross Thompson ‘22, who proposed the theme. 

“One day, Dylan England, who is a football player and a racecar driver, brought his car to school. Cross Thompson said ‘You know what would be good, since we do the parade now and the cars, we should do a Cars theme, like Life is a Highway,’” Wenk said. “The little ones would love the cars.” 

Wenk went on to say that another reason they wanted to choose Cars as the theme was to get the lower school more involved, as they might know the characters very well. 

“You’re gonna see balloons, cars, there’s gonna be a big arch with checkered flags that the parade’s gonna go through,” said Wenk. “The littles are gonna have balloons of Lightning McQueen and all the characters. Even the middle school is gonna be decorated.”

Kinsley Alcorn ‘23, the Vice President of the SCA, explained how everyone has been working on the parade theme for a long time, since last year. “The theme was already set in our minds by last year,” Alcorn said, “when we saw Dylan’s amazing race car.” 

Wenk added, “I would say, we started on homecoming on July 1.”

After watching the homecoming parade, Aashee Nanda ‘24 commented on her favorite part of the parade, which was “getting to see the variety of students, costumes and cars that managed to stroll along the street.”

One of the main challenges involving planning for this year’s homecoming was that their plans kept getting bigger. For the PowderPuff game, there was originally going to be a halftime show, where they called out names for prizes, but some of the football players wanted to prepare a dance-off. 

“We started working on [the halftime show] at the beginning of October,” Wenk said. “We have been in the CAC every lunch for almost three weeks now, but it was so much fun. So, even though it gets bigger, there’s so many people, and our student body is the best. I mean, I’ve never seen more spirit than this year.”

Wenk expressed that, with over 50 people, the SCA contributed a lot and was very involved in making this parade happen. 

“We not only have our executive board, but we have so many people that have joined SCA that we call honorary SCA,” Wenk said. “With all of the people in SCA, with our elected officers, and with the great student body that we have, I think that it just all works out here.”