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Music ringing through the air, decorations filling the hallways, the excitement is there for the students at NS as they celebrate an early homecoming the last week of August.
The Homecoming theme this year was “All-star” inspired by the movie Shrek. However, the “All-star” theme wasn’t their first option for the homecoming theme.
“The theme wasn’t originally Shrek in fact,” student body secretary Jackson Dimmick said. “We were originally planning on doing carnival, however, we decided we should have a revote on the themes because, at the time, we believed carnival was a vague theme and it was hard to base activities off of.”
The change in the theme was caused by the desires the SBO’s wanted to achieve this homecoming. They didn’t believe they could achieve that goal with carnival as the theme.
“We really wanted to have a theme that a lot of activities and events could go along with and overall make the week very solid and filled, ” Student Body President Brandt Lund said.
The other theme options gave restrictions to what the SBOs could and couldn’t do.
“We didn’t have the options to stream the movies that went along with the other themes,” Dimmick said, “they would be Disney movies and we didn’t have the rights to show them.”
The other options the SBOs were trying to decide between were Shrek, Wonderland, Batman, Western, and The Lorax.
“Overall what really allowed us to choose Shrek was our activity agent Gracie Larson who took a lot of time to lay out the week,” Lund said. “When Gracie presented her idea it just stuck out. She had every detail planned down to the lunch handouts, activities and the game dress up themes.”
Each day in the homecoming week had a theme NS could dress up for. Monday was ‘Merica, Tuesday was tourist, Wednesday was runway, Thursday was wabbit season (camo day), and Friday was blackout for the football game.
“We talked as a student government and decided what we liked for each day, what was popular in the past years, and what fit in with those events happening that day,” Dimmick said. “A lot of the time the themes would go off of each other and it would just work.”
At the beginning of the week the school announced who the homecoming royalty were. Brooklyn Larson as the queen, Ellie Finlinson as junior attendant, Reagan Anderson as the sophomore attendant and Annie Madsen as the freshman attendant.
“What made [winning] fun was the girls I did it with,” Larson said. “All the girls were so much fun to be around and so kind. We all just got along really well.”
After the royalty was announced on Friday night before the football game, a helicopter from Richfield landed on the field to deliver the game ball. Then the game started. Playing the Delta Rabbits, NS finished the game 32-21 taking the win.
“[Taking the win] is what we’re most proud of,” captain Taualoa Laupapa said, “being able to win the homecoming game and having a good week, it was a great time.”
Homecoming was earlier this year because the coaches wanted the homecoming game to be against a rival team.
“Delta is a rivalry game,” head coach Tu Tui said, “the team plays better under pressure, and they handled it very well. We can guide them a little bit but at the end of the day, they perform.”
The team wasn’t the coaches only priority when deciding to play Delta. They also thought of the students at NS.
“It made the dance more exciting that they won,” Tui said, “If you lose homecoming the dance usually isn’t fun.”
Overall, the team is proud of what they accomplished and is happy with how it went.
“At the end of the day,” Tui said, “the game of football is like the game of life, you take what you get and you roll with it.”
A long standing tradition is the NS drill team is in charge of decorating for the homecoming dance. The SBO’s also helped with the team by letting them know what they thought looked best.
“Gracie had told us to do the forest from Shrek,” senior Spiriteer Rianna Cook said. “That gave us the ideas for vines and other decorations.”
The homecoming dance ended the celebrated week strong on Saturday night.
“We got decorations and did what we could,” Cook said. “We had [the decorations] already and it only took a few hours with the help of the SBOs to set up.”
The team did have struggles along the way with decorations and sound.
“It was hard to fully think out ideas for Shrek,” Cook said, “it was difficult to decorate for and we weren’t aware that we had to find a DJ but it all came together in the end.”
Even with the struggles the team enjoyed helping out as a team.
“I think it’s good as a team to go and do stuff like that,” Cook said, “because it’s team bonding and it’s good to get to know the girls better and to do stuff as a team.”
