Many people believe that with hard work anything is possible, even at the high school level. This is shown with the preparation of West High Homecoming. From formal dance attire to astonishing and thriving spirit shown through creative spirit days, many students are involved in turning one school week into endless fun.

Almost everyone in the school is somewhat involved in making this event happen, with choosing the court, practicing for the homecoming football game, making floats and posters, or even just participating in the spirit days that represent the theme. The theme for the 2019 West High Homecoming was “Natural Disaster”.

Kelsey Romig, Student Government Advisor, has been running the festivities for eight years now and during that time that he has been building, guiding, and teaching his students how to make a difference and be involved with the community around the school. In preparation for homecoming, students gather together and brainstorm ideas that they could use for this specific event. “We have a couple formal meetings where we decide the theme and the spirit days,” Romig said.

He mentioned how homecoming was a great occasion to hold at the beginning of the school year as it’s a very big social event that is beneficial towards the community. “I think homecoming is great…you’ve got a big spirit week, assembly, games, flag football girls are kickin’ butt and a big dance to cap it off,” Romig explains.

Romig’s advice to those who want to be able to participate in these kind of events in the future and be a part of student government is that you need to come by room 48 in April as they will be passing out the election packets required to join. “You fill out a little bit about yourself, get some signatures depending on what position you’re running for, then you just run like it’s a presidential election,” Romig said.

Catherine Odell, senior class treasurer and secretary, explains the process with the preparation to homecoming and that the StuGo students are really happy with how everything is coming together. When asked if there was anything that they wished they could’ve done differently, Odell goes into detail about how they could’ve made the process easier. “Starting earlier…we could’ve ordered things a little bit earlier, have a couple more voices being heard for spirit week and the homecoming theme,” Odell explains.

Although they could’ve started off with a boost, the students were still satisfied with the hard work and progress they made in the short amount of time, especially with the unique ideas that the representatives from Student Government have come up with for the theme and the spirit days. “We figured we wanted something big, loud and exciting and ‘Natural Disasters’ just said big, loud, and exciting,” Odell said.

Despite how everything overall went smoothly, there were some hardships and stress within the preparation of homecoming. “It can be stressful because there’s a lot of voices that want to be heard and there’s a lot of people who want their opinion to be shared. But there’s a lot of controversy with who wants to do what, who wants to say what, and who wants to be the loudest,” Odell said.

Kristina Yu, a senior on homecoming court, elaborates on her experience with being chosen to be on homecoming court and how she feels about this surprising commitment. She goes into detail about how she was not expecting to be on court, how it made her more spirited, and what she feels about the stereotype of how being on homecoming court makes you “popular” and that she doesn’t think that she is. “I hate those old movies where all the popular people are all on homecoming. That’s so dumb, I don’t think so at all,” Yu said.

When it comes to the requirements to be on court, diversity would want to come into play and Yu has an opinion on the process. “Some of my friends don’t have varsity letters but they should’ve been on court instead of me,” Yu explains.

She believes that there should be more opportunities to those who don’t have their varsity letters even though they have been very active towards the school and community as in reality, some of those people don’t get their letters until the last day of the school year.