Homecoming isn’t just a day or two at Southeast. It’s a whole week. We do many festivities all throughout the week in honor of Homecoming. These things include spirit week where the students get to dress up based on the themes, and the whole process of electing the Homecoming candidates. When the Homecoming candidates are chosen, each of them gets to make a video showing pictures of them growing up throughout the years, so the rest of the school got to watch those during the week as well. One of the newest additions we have added is the Homecoming Parade in place of decorating the hallways, like we have done in the past.
The Homecoming Parade took place in Gypsum on September 13, 2023. It started at 6:40pm that night to ensure the kids in extracurricular activities could make it. The students got to make floats for all the activities, clubs, and other organizations they are involved in. The list of floats included: cross country, volleyball, football, FCCLA, and FFA. Clubs like Trust and band also marched in the parade. The parade also had several cars in it advertising local businesses. Some of the cars represented the Homecoming candidates, police officers, the Spotlight paper, Assaria Hardware, TNT Auto, 4H, Designs in Lindsborg, Agri Trails Coop, and several other families driving cars in support of our school. The parade was kept short and simple, but that wasn’t the end of the night. After everyone on the floats, in the cars, or on Gypsum’s main street had finished with the parade, they headed over to the baseball field.
At the baseball field, the Sparklers and the cheerleaders put on a pep rally. The Sparklers danced and the cheerleaders cheered. Then they worked together and took a couple of students from each grade level and taught them a quick dance. The students got to do the dance they learned with the music in front of everyone. After they finished the dance, everyone cheered to vote for which grade level they thought did the dance the best. The sophomores cheered the loudest, so they ended up winning that competition. The next thing on the agenda included the Homecoming King candidates putting makeup on one of the staff members or coaches blindfolded. The winner of this competition was Meredith Gleason whose makeup was done by Nathan Friesen and Sadie Franklin. After this competition, the festivities were wrapped up.
There was a great turnout at the parade with not just students, but also the community. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and was glad to see how smoothly it ran for it being our first annual Homecoming Parade.
